Tag archieven: occupation

Gaza is still occupied territory

Juli 2014. Het Israëlische leger bombardeert de Gazastrook.

THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA

GAZA IS STILL OCCUPIED TERRITORY

”The Israeli government’s plan to remove troops and Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip would not end Israel’s occupation of the territory. As an occupying power, Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population.

Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAEL: ”DISENGAGEMENT” WILL NOT

END GAZA OCCUPATION

28 OCTOBER 2004

https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/10/28/israel-disengagement-will-not-end-gaza-occupation

Israeli Government Still Holds Responsibility for Welfare of Civilians

The Israeli government’s plan to remove troops and Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip would not end Israel’s occupation of the territory. As an occupying power, Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population.

Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

Under the plan, Israel is scheduled to remove settlers and military bases protecting the settlers from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank Jewish settlements by the end of 2005. The Israeli military will remain deployed on Gaza’s southern border, and will reposition its forces to other areas just outside the territory.

In addition to controlling the borders, coastline and airspace, Israel will continue to control Gaza’s telecommunications, water, electricity and sewage networks, as well as the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. Gaza will also continue to use Israeli currency.

A World Bank study on the economic effects of the plan determined that “disengagement” would ease restrictions on mobility inside Gaza. But the study also warned that the removal of troops and settlers would have little positive effect unless accompanied by an opening of Gaza’s borders. If the borders are sealed to labor and trade, the plan “would create worse hardship than is seen today.”

The plan also explicitly envisions continued home demolitions by the Israeli military to expand the “buffer zone” along the Gaza-Egypt border. According to a report released last week by Human Rights Watch, the Israeli military has illegally razed nearly 1,600 homes since 2000 to create this buffer zone, displacing some 16,000 Palestinians. Israeli officials have called for the buffer zone to be doubled, which would result in the destruction of one-third of the Rafah refugee camp.

In addition, the plan states that disengagement “will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” A report by legal experts from the Israeli Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the military made public on Sunday, however, reportedly acknowledges that disengagement “does not necessarily exempt Israel from responsibility in the evacuated territories.”

If Israel removes its troops from Gaza, the Palestinian National Authority will maintain responsibility for security within the territory—to the extent that Israel allows Palestinian police the authority and capacity. Palestinian security forces will still have a duty to protect civilians within Gaza and to prevent indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Under international law, the test for determining whether an occupation exists is effective control by a hostile army, not the positioning of troops,” Whitson said. “Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control.”

Under international law, the duties of an occupying power are detailed in the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations. According to The Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

The “disengagement plan,” as adopted by the Israeli Cabinet on June 6, 2004, and endorsed by the Knesset on October 26, is available at:

http://www.pmo.gov.il/nr/exeres/C5E1ACE3-9834-414E-9512-8E5F509E9A4D.htm.

 EINDE HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH STATEMENT

NIEUW BERICHT:

Israel’s Obligations to Gaza under International Law

Israeli authorities claim “broad powers and discretion to decide who may enter its territory” and that “a foreigner has no legal right to enter the State’s sovereign territory, including for the purposes of transit into the [West Bank] or aboard.” While international human rights law gives wide latitude to governments with regard to entry of foreigners, Israel has heightened obligations toward Gaza residents. Because of the continuing controls Israel exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, Israel remains an occupying power under international humanitarian law, despite withdrawing its military forces and settlements from the territory in 2005”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

GAZA: ISRAEL’S ”OPEN AIR PRISON” AT 15

14 JUNE 2022

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/gaza-israels-open-air-prison-15

(Gaza) – Israel’s sweeping restrictions on leaving Gaza deprive its more than two million residents of opportunities to better their lives, Human Rights Watch said today on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2007 closure. The closure has devastated the economy in Gaza, contributed to fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and forms part of Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.

Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.

“Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “As many people around the world are once again traveling two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians remain under what amounts to a 15-year-old lockdown.”

Israel should end its generalized ban on travel for Gaza residents and permit free movement of people to and from Gaza, subject to, at most, individual screening and physical searches for security purposes.

Between February 2021 and March 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 Palestinians who sought to travel out of Gaza via either the Israeli-run Erez crossing or the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing. Human Rights Watch wrote to Israeli and Egyptian authorities to solicit their perspectives on its findings, and separately to seek information about an Egyptian travel company that operates at the Rafah crossing but had received no responses at this writing.

Since 2007, Israeli authorities have, with narrow exceptions, banned Palestinians from leaving through Erez, the passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel, through which they can reach the West Bank and travel abroad via Jordan. Israel also prevents Palestinian authorities from operating an airport or seaport in Gaza. Israeli authorities also sharply restrict the entry and exit of goods.

They often justify the closure, which came after Hamas seized political control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007, on security grounds. Israeli authorities have said they want to minimize travel between Gaza and the West Bank to prevent the export of “a human terrorist network” from Gaza to the West Bank, which has a porous border with Israel and where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live.

This policy has reduced travel to a fraction of what it was two decades ago, Human Rights Watch said. Israeli authorities have instituted a formal “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, despite international consensus that these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory form a “single territorial unit.” Israel accepted that principle in the 1995 Oslo Accords, signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli authorities restrict all travel between Gaza and the West Bank, even when the travel takes place via the circuitous route through Egypt and Jordan rather than through Israeli territory.

Due to these policies, Palestinian professionals, students, artists, and athletes living in Gaza have missed vital opportunities for advancement not available in Gaza. Human Rights Watch interviewed seven people who said that Israeli authorities did not respond to their requests for travel through Erez, and three others who said Israel rejected their permits, apparently for not fitting within Israeli’s narrow criteria.

Walaa Sada, 31, a filmmaker, said that she applied for permits to take part in film training in the West Bank in 2014 and 2018, after spending years convincing her family to allow her to travel alone, but Israeli authorities never responded to her applications. The hands-on nature of the training, requiring filming live scenes and working in studios, made remote participation impracticable and Sada ended up missing the sessions.

The “world narrowed” when she received these rejections, Sada said, making her feel “stuck in a small box.… For us in Gaza, the hands of the clock stopped. People all over the world can easily and quickly book flight and travel, while we … die waiting for our turn.”

The Egyptian authorities have exacerbated the closure’s impact by restricting movement out of Gaza and at times fully sealing its Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s only outlet aside from Erez to the outside world. Since May 2018, Egyptian authorities have been keeping Rafah open more regularly, making it, amid the sweeping Israeli restrictions, the primary outlet to the outside world for Gaza residents.

Palestinians, however, still face onerous obstacles traveling through Egypt, including having to wait weeks for permission to travel, unless they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to travel companies with significant ties to Egyptian authorities to expedite their travel, denials of entry, and abuse by Egyptian authorities.

Sada said also received an opportunity to participate in a workshop on screenwriting in Tunisia in 2019, but that she could not afford the US$2000 it would cost her to pay for the service that would ensure that she could travel on time. Her turn to travel came up six weeks later, after the workshop had already been held.

As an occupying power that maintains significant control over many aspects of life in Gaza, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the welfare of the population there. Palestinians also have the right under international human rights law to freedom of movement, in particular within the occupied territory, a right that Israel can restrict under international law only in response to specific security threats.

Israel’s policy, though, presumptively denies free movement to people in Gaza, with narrow exceptions, irrespective of any individualized assessment of the security risk a person may pose. These restrictions on the right to freedom of movement do not meet the requirement of being strictly necessary and proportionate to achieve a lawful objective. Israel has had years and many opportunities to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights.

Egypt’s legal obligations toward Gaza residents are more limited, as it is not an occupying power. However, as a state party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, it should ensure respect for the convention “in all circumstances,” including protections for civilians living under military occupation who are unable to travel due to unlawful restrictions imposed by the occupying power. The Egyptian authorities should also consider the impact of their border closure on the rights of Palestinians living in Gaza who are unable to travel in and out of Gaza through another route, including the right to leave a country.

Egyptian authorities should lift unreasonable obstacles that restrict Palestinians’ rights and allow transit via its territory, subject to security considerations, and ensure that their decisions are transparent and not arbitrary and take into consideration the human rights of those affected.

“The Gaza closure blocks talented, professional people, with much to give their society, from pursuing opportunities that people elsewhere take for granted,” Shakir said. “Barring Palestinians in Gaza from moving freely within their homeland stunts lives and underscores the cruel reality of apartheid and persecution for millions of Palestinians.”

Israel’s Obligations to Gaza under International Law

Israeli authorities claim “broad powers and discretion to decide who may enter its territory” and that “a foreigner has no legal right to enter the State’s sovereign territory, including for the purposes of transit into the [West Bank] or aboard.” While international human rights law gives wide latitude to governments with regard to entry of foreigners, Israel has heightened obligations toward Gaza residents. Because of the continuing controls Israel exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, Israel remains an occupying power under international humanitarian law, despite withdrawing its military forces and settlements from the territory in 2005. Both the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardians of international humanitarian law, have reached this determination. As the occupying power, Israel remains bound to provide residents of Gaza the rights and protections afforded to them by the law of occupation. Israeli authorities continue to control Gaza’s territorial waters and airspace, and the movement of people and goods, except at Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel also controls the Palestinian population registry and the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies.

Israel has an obligation to respect the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza, including their right to freedom of movement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and abroad, which affects both the right to leave a country and the right to enter their own country. Israel is also obligated to respect Palestinians’ rights for which freedom of movement is a precondition, for example the rights to education, work, and health. The UN Human Rights Committee has said that while states can restrict freedom of movement for security reasons or to protect public health, public order, and the rights of others, any such restrictions must be proportional and “the restrictions must not impair the essence of the right; the relation between the right and restriction, between norm and exception, must not be reversed.”

While the law of occupation permits occupying powers to impose security restrictions on civilians, it also requires them to restore public life for the occupied population. That obligation increases in a prolonged occupation, in which the occupier has more time and opportunity to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights. In addition, the needs of the occupied population increase over time. Suspending virtually all freedom of movement for a short period interrupts temporarily normal public life, but long-term, indefinite suspension in Gaza has had a much more debilitating impact, fragmentating populations, fraying familial and social ties, compounding discrimination against women, and blocking people from pursuing opportunities to improve their lives.

The impact is particularly damaging given the denial of freedom of movement to people who are confined to a sliver of the occupied territory, unable to interact in person with the majority of the occupied population that lives in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and its rich assortment of educational, cultural, religious, and commercial institutions.

After 55 years of occupation and 15 years of closure in Gaza with no end in sight, Israel should fully respect the human rights of Palestinians, using as a benchmark the rights it grants Israeli citizens. Israel should abandon an approach that bars movement absent exceptional individual humanitarian circumstances it defines, in favor of an approach that permits free movement absent exceptional individual security circumstances.

Israel’s Closure

Most Palestinians who grew up in Gaza under this closure have never left the 40-by-11 kilometer (25-by-7 mile) Gaza Strip. For the last 25 years, Israel has increasingly restricted the movement of Gaza residents. Since June 2007, when Hamas seized control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), Gaza has been mostly closed.

Israeli authorities justify this closure on security grounds, in light of “Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip,” as they lay out in a December 2019 court filing. Authorities highlight in particular the risk that Hamas and armed Palestinian groups will recruit or coerce Gaza residents who have permits to travel via Erez “for the commission of terrorist acts and the transfer of operatives, knowledge, intelligence, funds or equipment for terrorist activists.” Their policy, though, amounts to a blanket denial with rare exceptions, rather than a generalized respect for the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement, to be denied only on the basis of individualized security reasons.  

The Israeli army has since 2007 limited travel through the Erez crossing except in what it deems “exceptional humanitarian circumstances,” mainly encompassing those needing vital medical treatment outside Gaza and their companions, although the authorities also make exceptions for hundreds of businesspeople and laborers and some others. Israel has restricted movement even for those seeking to travel under these narrow exceptions, affecting their rights to health and life, among others, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented. Most Gaza residents do not fit within these exemptions to travel through Erez, even if it is to reach the West Bank.

Between January 2015 and December 2019, before the onset of Covid-19 restrictions, an average of about 373 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, less than 1.5 percent of the daily average of 26,000 in September 2000, before the closure, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. Israeli authorities tightened the closure further during the Covid-19 pandemic – between March 2020 and December 2021, an average of about 143 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, according to Gisha.

Israeli authorities announced in March 2022 that they would authorize 20,000 permits for Palestinians in Gaza to work in Israel in construction and agriculture, though Gisha reports that the actual number of valid permits in this category stood at 9,424, as of May 22.

Israeli authorities have also for more than two decades sharply restricted the use by Palestinians of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters. They blocked the reopening of the airport that Israeli forces made inoperable in January 2002, and prevented the Palestinian authorities from building a seaport, leaving Palestinians dependent on leaving Gaza by land to travel abroad. The few Palestinians permitted to cross at Erez are generally barred from traveling abroad via Israel’s international airport and must instead travel abroad via Jordan. Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza via Erez, either to the West Bank or abroad, submit requests through the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee in Gaza, which forwards applications to Israeli authorities who decide on whether to grant a permit.

Separation Between Gaza and the West Bank

As part of the closure, Israeli authorities have sought to “differentiate” between their policy approaches to Gaza and the West Bank, such as imposing more sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods from Gaza to the West Bank, and promote separation between these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The army’s “Procedure for Settlement in the Gaza Strip by Residents of Judea and Samaria,” published in 2018, states that “in 2006, a decision was made to introduce a policy of separation between the Judea and Samaria Area [the West Bank] and the Gaza Strip in light of Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip. The policy currently in effect is explicitly aimed at reducing travel between the areas.”

In each of the 11 cases Human Rights Watch reviewed of people seeking to reach the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for professional and educational opportunities not available in Gaza, Israeli authorities did not respond to requests for permits or denied them, either for security reasons or because they did not conform to the closure policy. Human Rights Watch also reviewed permit applications on the website of the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, or screenshots of it, including the status of the permit applications, when they were sent on to the Israeli authorities and the response received, if any.

Raed Issa, a 42-year-old artist, said that the Israeli authorities did not respond to his application for a permit in early December 2015, to attend an exhibit of his art at a Ramallah art gallery between December 27 and January 16, 2016.

The “Beyond the Dream” exhibit sought to highlight the situation in Gaza after the 2014 war. Issa said that the Palestinian Civil Affairs committee continued to identify the status of his application as “sent and waiting for response” and he ended up having to attend the opening of the exhibit virtually. Issa felt that not being physically present hampered his ability to engage with audiences, and to network and promote his work, which he believes limited his reach and hurt sales of his artwork. He described feeling pained “that I am doing my own art exhibit in my homeland and not able to attend it, not able to move freely.”

Ashraf Sahweel, 47, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gaza Center for Art and Culture, said that Gaza-based artists routinely do not hear back after applying for Israeli permits, forcing them to miss opportunities to attend exhibitions and other cultural events. A painter himself, he applied for seven permits between 2013 and 2022, but Israeli authorities either did not respond or denied each application, he said. Sahweel said that he has “given up hope on the possibility to travel via Erez.”

Palestinian athletes in Gaza face similar restrictions when seeking to compete with their counterparts in the West Bank, even though the Israeli army guidelines specifically identify “entry of sportspeople” as among the permissible exemptions to the closure. The guidelines, updated in February 2022, set out that “all Gaza Strip residents who are members of the national and local sports teams may enter Israel in transit to the Judea and Samaria area [West Bank] or abroad for official activities of the teams.”

Hilal al-Ghawash, 25, told Human Rights Watch that his football team, Khadamat Rafah, had a match in July 2019 with a rival West Bank team, the Balata Youth Center, in the finals of Palestine Club, with the winner entitled to represent Palestine in the Asian Cup. The Palestinian Football Federation applied for permits for the entire 22-person team and 13-person staff, but Israeli authorities, without explanation, granted permits to only 4 people, only one of whom was a player. The game was postponed as a result.

After Gisha appealed the decision in the Jerusalem District Court, Israeli authorities granted 11 people permits, including six players, saying the other 24 were denied on security grounds that were not specified. Al-Ghawash was among the players who did not receive a permit. The Jerusalem district court upheld the denials. With Khadamat Rafah prevented from reaching the West Bank, the Palestine Football Federation canceled the Palestine Cup finals match.

Al-Ghawash said that West Bank matches hold particular importance for Gaza football players, since they offer the opportunity to showcase their talents for West Bank clubs, which are widely considered superior to those in Gaza and pay better. Despite the cancellation, al-Ghawash said, the Balata Youth Center later that year offered him a contract to play for them. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied for a permit on al-Ghawash’s behalf, but he said he did not receive a response and was unable to join the team.

In 2021, al-Ghawash signed a contract with a different West Bank team, the Hilal al-Quds club. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied, but this time, the Israeli army denied the permit on unspecified security grounds. Al-Ghawash said he does not belong to any armed group or political movement and has no idea on what basis Israeli authorities denied him a permit.

Missing these opportunities has forced al-Ghawash to forgo not only higher pay, but also the chance to play for more competitive West Bank teams, which could have brought him closer to his goal of joining the Palestinian national team. “There’s a future in the West Bank, but, here in Gaza, there’s only a death sentence,” he said. “The closure devastates players’ future. Gaza is full of talented people, but it’s so difficult to leave.”

Palestinian students and professionals are frequently unable to obtain permits to study or train in the West Bank. In 2016, Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem agreed to have 10 physics students from Al-Azhar University in Gaza come to the hospital for a six-month training program. Israeli authorities denied five students permits without providing a rationale, two of the students said.

The five other students initially received permits valid for only 14 days, and then encountered difficulties receiving subsequent permits. None were able to complete the full program, the two students said. One, Mahmoud Dabour, 28, said that when he applied for a second permit, he received no response. Two months later, he applied again and managed to get a permit valid for one week. He received one other permit, valid for 10 days, but then, when he returned and applied for the fifth time, Israeli authorities rejected his permit request without providing a reason. As a result, he could not finish the training program, and, without the certification participants receive upon completion, he said, he cannot apply for jobs or attend conferences or workshops abroad in the field.

Dabour said that the training cannot be offered in Gaza, since the necessary radiation material required expires too quickly for it to be functional after passing through the time-consuming Israeli inspections of materials entering the Gaza Strip. There are no functioning devices of the kind that students need for the training in Gaza, Dabour said.

One of the students whose permit was denied said, “I feel I studied for five years for nothing, that my life has stopped.” The student asked that his name be withheld for his security.

Two employees of Zimam, a Ramallah-based organization focused on youth empowerment and conflict resolution, said that the Israeli authorities repeatedly denied them permits to attend organizational training and strategy meetings. Atta al-Masri, the 31-year-old Gaza regional director, said he has applied four times for permits, but never received one. Israeli authorities did not respond the first three times and, the last time in 2021, denied him a permit on the grounds that it was “not in conformity” with the permissible exemptions to the closure. He has worked for Zimam since 2009, but only met his colleagues in person for the first time in Egypt in March 2022.

Ahed Abdullah, 29, Zimam’s youth programs coordinator in Gaza, said she applied twice for permits in 2021, but Israeli authorities denied both applications on grounds of “nonconformity:”

This is supposed to be my right. My simplest right. Why did they reject me? My colleagues who are outside Palestine managed to make it, while I am inside Palestine, I wasn’t able to go to the other part of Palestine … it’s only 2-3 hours from Gaza to Ramallah, why should I get the training online? Why am I deprived of being with my colleagues and doing activities with them instead of doing them in dull breakout rooms on Zoom?


Human Rights Watch has previously documented that the closure has prevented specialists in the use of assistive devices for people with disabilities from opportunities for hands-on training on the latest methods of evaluation, device maintenance, and rehabilitation. Human Rights Watch also documented restrictions on the movement of human rights workers. Gisha, the Israeli human rights group, has reported that Israel has blocked health workers in Gaza from attending training in the West Bank on how to operate new equipment and hampered the work of civil society organizations operating in Gaza.

Israeli authorities have also made it effectively impossible for Palestinians from Gaza to relocate to the West Bank. Because of Israeli restrictions, thousands of Gaza residents who arrived on temporary permits and now live in the West Bank are unable to gain legal residency. Although Israel claims that these restrictions are related to maintaining security, evidence Human Rights Watch collected suggests the main motivation is to control Palestinian demography across the West Bank, whose land Israel seeks to retain, in contrast to the Gaza Strip.

Egypt

With most Gaza residents unable to travel via Erez, the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing has become Gaza’s primary outlet to the outside world, particularly in recent years. Egyptian authorities kept Rafah mostly closed for nearly five years following the July 2013 military coup in Egypt that toppled President Mohamed Morsy, whom the military accused of receiving support from Hamas. Egypt, though, eased restrictions in May 2018, amid the Great March of Return, the recurring Palestinian protests at the time near the fences separating Gaza and Israel.

Despite keeping Rafah open more regularly since May 2018, movement via Rafah is a fraction of what it was before the 2013 coup in Egypt. Whereas an average of 40,000 crossed monthly in both directions before the coup, the monthly average was 12,172 in 2019 and 15,077 in 2021, according to Gisha.

Human Rights Watch spoke with 16 Gaza residents who sought to travel via Rafah. Almost all said they opted for this route because of the near impossibility of receiving an Israeli permit to travel via Erez.

Gaza residents hoping to leave via Rafah are required to register in advance via a process the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has deemed “confusing” and “obscure.” Gaza residents can either register via the formal registration process administered by Gaza’s Interior Ministry or informally via what is known as tanseeq, or travel coordination with Egyptian authorities, paying travel companies or mediators for a place on a separate list coordinated by Egyptian authorities. Having two distinct lists of permitted travelers coordinated by different authorities has fueled “allegations of the payment of bribes in Gaza and in Egypt to ensure travel and a faster response,” according to OCHA.

The formal process often takes two to three months, except for those traveling for medical reasons, whose requests are processed faster, said Gaza residents who sought to leave Gaza via Rafah. Egyptian authorities have at times rejected those seeking to cross Rafah into Egypt on the grounds that they did not meet specific criteria for travel. The criteria lack transparency, but Gisha reported that they include having a referral for a medical appointment in Egypt or valid documents to enter a third country.

To avoid the wait and risk of denial, many choose instead the tanseeq route. Several interviewees said that they paid large sums of money to Palestinian brokers or Gaza-based travel companies that work directly with Egyptian authorities to expedite people’s movement via Rafah. On social media, some of these companies advertise that they can assure travel within days to those who provide payment and a copy of their passport. The cost of tanseeq has fluctuated from several hundred US dollars to several thousand dollars over the last decade, based in part on how frequently Rafah is open.

In recent years, travel companies have offered an additional “VIP” tanseeq, which expedites travel without delays in transit between Rafah and Cairo, offers flexibility on travel date, and ensures better treatment by authorities. The cost was $700, as of January 2022.

The Cairo-based company offering the VIP tanseeq services, Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, has strong links with Egypt’s security establishment and is staffed largely by former Egyptian military officers, a human rights activist and a journalist who have investigated these issues told Human Rights Watch. This allows the company to reduce processing times and delays at checkpoints during the journey between Rafah and Cairo. The activist and journalist both asked that their names be withheld for security reasons.  

The company is linked to prominent Egyptian businessman Ibrahim El-Argani, who has close ties with Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. Ergany heads the Union of Sinai Tribes, which works hand-in-hand with the Egyptian military and intelligence agencies against militants operating in North Sinai. Ergany, one of Egypt’s few businessmen able to export products to Gaza from Egypt, owns the Sinai Sons company, which has an exclusive contract to handle all contracts related to Gaza reconstruction efforts. Human Rights Watch wrote to El-Argani to solicit his perspectives on these issues, but had received no response at this writing.

A 34-year-old computer engineer and entrepreneur said that he sought to travel in 2019 to Saudi Arabia to meet an investor to discuss a potential project to sell car parts online. He chose not to apply to travel via Erez, as he had applied for permits eight times between 2016 and 2018 and had either been rejected or not heard back.

He initially registered via the formal Ministry of Interior process and received approval to travel after three months. However, on the day assigned for his exit via Rafah, an Egyptian officer there said he found his reason for travel not sufficiently “convincing” and denied him passage. A few months later, he tried to travel again for the same purpose, this time opting for tanseeq and paying $400, and, this time, he successfully reached Saudi Arabia within a week of seeking to travel.

He said that he would like to go on vacation with his wife, but worries that Egyptian authorities will not consider vacation a sufficiently compelling reason for travel and that his only option will be to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do tanseeq.

A 73-year-old man sought to travel via Rafah in February 2021, with his 46-year-old daughter, to get knee replacement surgery in al-Sheikh Zayed hospital in Cairo. He said Gaza lacks the capacity to provide such an operation. The man and his daughter are relatives of a Human Rights Watch staff member. They applied via the Interior Ministry process and received approval in a little over a week.

After they waited for several hours in the Egyptian hall in Rafah on the day of travel, though, Egyptian authorities included the daughter’s name among the 70 names of people who were not allowed to cross that day, the daughter said. The father showed the border officials a doctor’s note indicating that he needed someone to travel with him given his medical situation, but the officer told him, “You either travel alone or go back with her to Gaza.” She said she returned to Gaza, alongside 70 other people, and her father later traveled on his own.

Five people who did manage to travel via Rafah said that they experienced poor conditions and poor treatment, including intrusive searches, by the Egyptian authorities, with several saying that they felt Egyptian authorities treated them like “criminals.” Several people said that Egyptian officers confiscated items from them during the journey, including an expensive camera and a mobile phone, without apparent reason.

Upon leaving Rafah, Palestinians are transported by bus to Cairo’s airport. The trip takes about seven hours, but several people said that the journey took up to three days between long periods of waiting on the bus, at checkpoints and amid other delays, often in extreme weather. Many of those who traveled via Rafah said that, during this journey, Egyptian authorities prevented passengers from using their phones.

The parents of a 7-year-old boy with autism and a rare brain disease said they sought to travel for medical treatment for him in August 2021, but Egyptian authorities only allowed the boy and his mother to enter. The mother said their journey back to Gaza took four days, mostly as a result of Rafah being closed. During this time, she said, they spent hours waiting at checkpoints, in extreme heat, with her son crying nonstop. She said she felt “humiliated” and treated like “an animal,” observing that she “would rather die than travel again through Rafah.”

A 33-year-old filmmaker, who traveled via Rafah to Morocco in late 2019 to attend a film screening, said the return from Cairo to Rafah took three days, much of it spent at checkpoints amid the cold winter in the Sinai desert.

A 34-year-old man said that he planned to travel in August 2019 via Rafah to the United Arab Emirates for a job interview as an Arabic teacher. He said, on his travel date, Egyptian authorities turned him back, saying they had met their quota of travelers. He crossed the next day, but said that, as it was a Thursday and with Rafah closed on Friday, Egyptian authorities made travelers spend two nights sleeping at Rafah, without providing food or access to a clean bathroom.

The journey to Cairo airport then took two days, during which he described going through checkpoints where officers made passengers “put their hands behind their backs while they searched their suitcases.” As a result of these delays totaling four days since his assigned travel date, he missed his job interview and found out that someone else was hired. He is currently unemployed in Gaza.

Given the uncertainty of crossing at Rafah, Gaza residents said that they often wait to book their flight out of Cairo until they arrive. Booking so late often means, beyond other obstacles, having to wait until they can find a reasonably priced and suitable flight, planning extra days for travel and spending extra money on changeable or last-minute tickets. Similar dynamics prevail with regard to travel abroad via Erez to Amman.

Human Rights Watch interviewed four men under the age of 40 with visas to third countries, whom Egyptian authorities allowed entry only for the purpose of transit. The authorities transported these men to Cairo airport and made them wait in what is referred to as the “deportation room” until their flight time. The men likened the room to a “prison cell,” with limited facilities and unsanitary conditions. All described a system in which bribes are required to be able to leave the room to book a plane ticket, get food, drinks, or a cigarette, and avoid abuse. One of the men described an officer taking him outside the room, asking him, “Won’t you give anything to Egypt?” and said that others in the room told him that he then proceeded to do the same with them

EINDE ARTIKEL

”“Israel has the responsibility as the Occupying Power to protect the civilian population. But instead of allowing a healthy people and economy to flourish, Israeli authorities have sealed off the Gaza Strip”

UNITED NATIONS 

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT IN GAZA MUST END: 

ISRAEL’S BLOCKADE ENTERS IN IT’S 7TH YEAR-

UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR

14 JUNE 2013

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2013/06/collective-punishment-gaza-must-end-israels-blockade-enters-its-7th-year-un

GENEVA, 14 June 2013 – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, Richard Falk, called today on Israel to end its blockade over the Gaza Strip, six years after it was tightened following the Hamas takeover in June 2007. The human suffering of the land, sea and air blockade imposed on the 1.75 million Palestinians living in one of the most densely populated and impoverished areas of the world has been devastating.

“Six years of Israel’s calculated strangulation of the Gaza Strip has stunted the economy and has kept most Gazans in a state of perpetual poverty and aid dependency,” said the UN expert. “Whether it is fishermen unable to go beyond six nautical miles from the shore, farmers unable to access their land near the Israeli fence, businessmen suffering from severe restrictions on the export of goods, students denied access to education in the West Bank, or patients in need of urgent medical attention refused access to Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank, the destructive designs of blockade have been felt by every single household in Gaza. It is especially felt by Palestinian families separated by the blockade,” he added.

“The people of Gaza have endured the unendurable and suffered what is insufferable for six years. Israel’s collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza must end today,” said the Special Rapporteur.

“Israel has the responsibility as the Occupying Power to protect the civilian population. But instead of allowing a healthy people and economy to flourish, Israeli authorities have sealed off the Gaza Strip. According to statistics released by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, last month’s exports out of Gaza consisted of 49 truckloads of empty boxes, three truckloads of spices, one truckload of cut flowers, and one truckload of furniture,” he said. In 2012, the total number of truckloads of exports leaving Gaza was 254, compared to 9,787 in 2005 before the tightening of the blockade.

“It does not take an economist to figure out that such a trickle of goods out of Gaza is not the basis of a viable economy,” noted the UN expert. “The easing of the blockade announced by Israel in June 2010 after its deadly assault on the flotilla of ships carrying aid to the besieged population resulted only in an increase in consumer goods entering Gaza, and has not improved living conditions for most Gazans. Since 2007, the productive capacity of Gaza has dwindled with 80 percent of factories in Gaza now closed or operating at half capacity or less due to the loss of export markets and prohibitively high operating costs as a result of the blockade. 34 percent of Gaza’s workforce is unemployed including up to half the youth population, 44 percent of Gazans are food insecure, 80 percent of Gazans are aid recipients,” he said.

“To make matters worse, 90 percent of the water from the Gaza aquifer is unsafe for human consumption without treatment, and severe fuel and electricity shortage results in outages of up to 12 hours a day. Only a small proportion of Gazans who can afford to obtain supplies through the tunnel economy are buffered from the full blow of the blockade, but tunnels alone cannot meet the daily needs of the population in Gaza.”

“Last year, the United Nations forecast that under existing conditions, Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. Less optimistic forecasts presented to me were that the Gaza Strip may no longer be viable only three years from now,” said the Special Rapporteur. “It’s clear that the Israeli authorities set out six years ago to devitalize the Gazan population and economy,” he said, referring to a study undertaken by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in early 2008 detailing the minimum number of calories Palestinians in Gaza need to consume on a daily basis to avoid malnutrition. The myriad of restrictions imposed by Israel do not permit civilians in Gaza to develop to their full potential, and enjoy and exercise fully their human rights.

ENDS

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council designated Richard Falk (United States of America) as the fifth Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Learn more, log on to: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/countries/ps/mandate/index.htm

UN Human Rights – Occupied Palestinian Territories: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/countries/MENARegion/Pages/PSIndex.aspx

UN Human Rights – Israel: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/ILIndex.aspx

For more information and media requests, please contact Kevin Turner (kturner@ohchr.org) or Kiyohiko Hasegawa khasegawa@ohchr.org) or write to sropt@ohchr.org

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts:
Cécile Pouilly, UN Human Rights – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org)

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”Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza,[26] the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still occupied by Israel, supported by additional restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt. Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza’s air and maritime space, as well as six of Gaza’s seven land crossings”

WIKIPEDIA

GAZA STRIP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

”Under the “Disengagement” Plan, Gazans will still be subjected to the effective control of the Israeli military. Although Israel will supposedly remove its permanent military presence, Israeli forces will retain the ability and right to enter the Gaza Strip at will.[28] 

Further, Israel will retain control over Gaza’s airspace, sea shore, and borders.[29]  Under the Plan, Israel will unilaterally control whether or not Gaza opens a seaport or an airport. Additionally, Israel will control all border crossings, including Gaza’s border with Egypt.[30]  And Israel will “continue its military activity along the Gaza Strip’s coastline.”[31]  Taken together, these powers mean that all goods and people entering or leaving Gaza will be subject to Israeli control. ”

UNITED NATIONS

THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

THE ISRAELI ”DISENGAGEMENT” PLAN”GAZA STILL OCCUPIED

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205755/

THE ISRAELI “DISENGAGEMENT” PLAN: GAZA STILL OCCUPIED  

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2005

“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process . . . . Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda . . . . All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”.”

                                    – Dov Weisglass, Senior Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

Legal Analysis:

Israel’s “Disengagement” plan from the Gaza Strip states that once fully enacted “there will be no basis to the claim that the Strip is occupied land,”[1] even though the Plan envisages indefinite Israeli military and economic control over the Gaza Strip. over the Gaza Strip. 

Israel’s eagerness to declare an end to the Gaza Strip’s occupation illustrates the strategy behind the Plan. First, Israel seeks to proclaim an end to the Gaza Strip’s occupation—ostensibly in order to absolve Israel of all legal responsibilities as an “occupying power”—while simultaneously retaining effective military control over the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants. Second, it hopes to garner international support for retaining and even expanding illegal colonies in the Occupied West Bank in exchange for a withdrawal from Gaza. This strategy’s success was most apparent in the April 14, 2004 Bush-Sharon press conference during which President Bush praised Sharon’s withdrawal plan and announced that “existing Israeli population centers” in Occupied Palestinian Territory would become part of Israel in any permanent status agreement.[2]  Third, as Israeli Bureau Chief Dov Weisglass confessed, Israel hopes to indefinitely freeze the peace process.

Variations of this strategy are not new: during the interim period of the Oslo Accords, Israel similarly carved away Palestinian population centers while retaining control over Palestinian movement, economy, and natural resources. Although Israel maintained effective military control over the evacuated areas (“Area A”)—and was therefore legally bound by its legal obligations as an occupying power—some Israeli government advisors argued that Area A was no longer occupied territory and absolved themselves of all legal responsibility.[3] In public and even some diplomatic discourse the occupation disappeared,

occupied territory became “disputed” territory, and the conflict was no longer one between an occupying power and an occupied population but rather a land dispute between two equal parties. 

Notwithstanding the terms of the Plan, Israel will remain an occupying power under international law after disengagement from Gaza and is therefore bound by the obligations of an Occupying Power under international customary law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.  

This updated legal analysis was originally released in October 2004 and is still accurate today, despite recent developments along the occupied Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt and coordination activities with the Palestinian Authority. 

I.    ISRAEL OCCUPIES THE GAZA STRIP

A.   Israel Occupies the Palestinian Territories 

The term “occupation” describes a regime of control over territory and population by a foreign sovereign’s military.[4]  When a foreign sovereign occupies land, international law obligates that sovereign to uphold basic standards to protect both the population under its control and the land on which that population lives.[5] 

The Hague Regulations of 1907 set forth the basic legal standard: “Territory is occupied when it has actually been placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation only extends to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”[6] This definition represents customary international law [7] and has been reaffirmed and expounded upon at the Nuremberg Tribunal,[8] in the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and in its First Additional Protocol (1979),[9] in state practice, in United Nations’ resolutions, and in the judgment of the International Court of Justice.[10]

In June 1967, the Israeli military took control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (together, the “Palestinian Territories”).[11] Ever since, Israel has maintained actual and effective control over the Palestinian Territories and the indigenous Palestinian population thereon. Consequently, Israel belligerently occupies the Palestinian Territories as a matter of law.  

B.   The International Community Recognizes Israel as the Occupying Power of the
      Palestinian Territories

Since 1967, the International Community has consistently held that Israel occupies the Palestinian Territories. United Nations Security Council resolution 242 called, in part, for Israel to withdraw from territories it “occupied.”[12]  Since then, the international community—including the United States[13] —has consistently reaffirmed that the territories, including East Jerusalem, are “occupied” as a matter of law. Indeed, both the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly reiterated in May 2004 that the Palestinian Territories are “occupied” as a matter of law.[14]

C.   Israel’s Supreme Court Recognizes Israel as the Occupying Power of the
      Palestinian Territories

The Israeli Supreme Court routinely refers to the Palestinian Territories [15] as occupied and selectively enforces international law with respect to the Israeli military presence there.[16] 

In 1979, for example, the Israeli Supreme Court stated: “This is a situation of belligerency and the status of [Israel] with respect to the occupied territory is that of an Occupying Power.”[17]  In 2002, the Israeli Supreme Court held again that the West Bank and Gaza Strip “are subject to a belligerent occupation by the State of Israel.”[18] 

Most recently, in June, 2004, the Israeli Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Territories are occupied under international law.[19] In order to find the putative legal authority to confiscate thousands of acres of Palestinian land to construct its Wall, the High Court proclaimed: “Since 1967, Israel has been holding [the Palestinian Territories] in belligerent occupation.”[20] 

Therefore, even though Israeli politicians may rhetorically dispute Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Israeli courts continually recognize the Israeli military as the Occupying Power of the Palestinian Territories. 

D.   The International Court of Justice Recognizes Israel as the Occupying Power

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice held that “. . .[t]he territories occupied by Israel have for over 37 years been subject to its territorial jurisdiction as the occupying Power.”[21]    

E.   Israel Remains an Occupying Power under the Oslo Accords

Israel maintained effective military control over the Palestinian Territories during the Oslo period (roughly 1993-2000), satisfying the general international legal standard for occupation. During Oslo, the Israeli military continued land confiscation and nearly doubled the population of its illegal colonies. Further, it continued building bypass roads and infrastructure, rendered Palestinian movement even more difficult, and frequently conducted military operations in and around the areas in which it had putatively ceded control.   

Since Oslo, the erection of Israel’s wall inside the Occupied West Bank provides another example of Israel’s ongoing control over Palestinians and their land.[22]  The Wall—a regime of concrete, electrified fences, trenches, razor wire and sniper towers—effectively divides Palestinians from their agricultural and water resources, limits access of Palestinians to their property and restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians within their own territory.  

Moreover, the Oslo Accords specifically affirmed that the Palestinian Territories would remain under Israeli occupation until the conclusion and implementation of a final peace treaty. Although the Accords permitted limited self-administration for some Palestinians, the Accords expressly reiterated that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will continue to be considered one territorial unit, and that withdrawal from Palestinian population centers will do nothing “to change the status” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the duration of the Accords.[23] 

Finally, the United Nations,[24] the international community,[25] the Israeli Supreme Court,[26] and the International Court of Justice all held during and after Oslo that Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The ICJ specifically emphasized that “[s]ubsequent events [to 1967’s War]…have done nothing to alter [the status of occupation].”[27] 

II.    THE GAZA STRIP  REMAINS OCCUPIED TERRITORY EVEN IMPLEMENTATION
        OF THE “DISENGAGEMENT” PLAN

A.   Israel Will Retain Effective Control over the Gaza Strip and Will Therefore Remain
      the Occupying Power

Under the “Disengagement” Plan, Gazans will still be subjected to the effective control of the Israeli military. Although Israel will supposedly remove its permanent military presence, Israeli forces will retain the ability and right to enter the Gaza Strip at will.[28] 

Further, Israel will retain control over Gaza’s airspace, sea shore, and borders.[29]  Under the Plan, Israel will unilaterally control whether or not Gaza opens a seaport or an airport. Additionally, Israel will control all border crossings, including Gaza’s border with Egypt.[30]  And Israel will “continue its military activity along the Gaza Strip’s coastline.”[31]  Taken together, these powers mean that all goods and people entering or leaving Gaza will be subject to Israeli control.  

Finally, Israel will prevent Gazans from engaging in international relations.[32]  Accordingly, if it enacts the “Disengagement” Plan as envisaged, Israel will effectively control Gaza—administratively and militarily.[33] Therefore, Israel will remain the Occupying Power of the Gaza Strip.

B.   Israel Will Remain the Occupying Power of the Gaza Strip so long as Israel Retains
      the Ability to Exercise Authority over the Strip

In The Hostages Case, the Nuremburg Tribunal expounded upon The Hague Regulations’ basic definition of occupation in order to ascertain when occupation ends.[34]  It held that “[t]he test for application of the legal regime of occupation is not whether the occupying power fails to exercise effective control over the territory, but whether it has the ability to exercise such power.”[35] In that case, the Tribunal had to decide whether Germany’s occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia had ended when Germany had ceded de facto control to non-German forces of certain territories. Even though Germany did not actually control those areas, the Tribunal held that Germany indeed remained the “occupying power”—both in Greece and Yugoslavia generally and in the territories to which it had ceded control—since it could have reentered and controlled those territories at will. 

Similarly, Israel will retain ultimate authority over Gaza and to a much greater degree than Germany in The Hostages Case: The Israeli military expressly reserves itself the right to enter the Gaza Strip at will. Further, Israel will not just retain the ability to exercise control over Gaza, but it will also retain effective control over Gaza’s borders, air and sea space, overall security, and international relations.      

Moreover, even if Israel should devolve some of its duties to third parties—either as co-occupying powers or as designees—Israel will remain an occupying power so long as it retains the ability to effectively control the Gaza Strip at will, whether with Israel’s own troops or those of its agents or partners.      

C.   As an Occupying Power, Israel Must Protect Palestinians and Their Lands

Since Israel will continue to occupy the Gaza Strip, Israel will still be bound by its obligations under International Law—namely 1907’s Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international customary law. Under international law, an occupying power must uphold certain obligations to the people and land it occupies. For example, an occupying power must maintain the status quo of occupied territory and may never unilaterally annex territory or transfer its civilian population into occupied territory.[36] Moreover, the occupying power’s activity in occupied territory must, inter alia, be for the benefit of the population it occupies.[37]

Nevertheless, the absence of a “permanent” Israeli military presence and illegal settlers will mark a significant change in Gaza’s 37-year-history of belligerent Israeli occupation. The Fourth Geneva Convention does indeed contemplate changes in the degree of occupation; changes in circumstances, however, do not necessarily translate into the end of occupation.[38] Since Israel will retain such a high-degree of administrative and military authority over Gaza—control over air space, sea space, the provision of public utility services, all border crossings, military security, and international relations[39]—Israel will still be bound to all relevant provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 1907’s Hague Regulations, and applicable customary international law.[40] 

III.    THE STRATEGY BEHIND THE DISENGAGEMENT PLAN  

A.   THE DISENGAGEMENT PLAN IS DEMOGRAPHICALLY MOTIVATED

Israel’s greatest battle is not against “terrorism,” but against demography. Statistical analyses project that Palestinian Christians and Muslims will comprise the majority of persons in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories by the year 2020.[41]   If Israel wants to remain a “Jewish state,” then it will be very difficult to maintain its Jewish identity if an ethno/religious minority continues to rule over an ethnic majority. Israeli journalist David Landau noted in a statement made to a British journalist that the Gaza plans represents “the simplest, crudest solution [to Israel’s demographic time bomb]: to dump Gaza and its 1.3 million Arabs in the hope that that would ‘buy’ [Israel] 50 more years.”[42]  

Therefore, one of the primary motivations behind Israel’s “Disengagement” Plan is to “dump” 1.3 million non-Jews while illegally confiscating as much Palestinian land in the West Bank as possible.  

B.   ISRAEL SEEKS TO CONSOLIDATE GAINS IN THE WEST BANK IN EXCHANGE FOR
      “CONCESSIONS” IN GAZA

While the world publicly debates the “Disengagement” Plan, Israel has been constructing the Wall in the Occupied West Bank. The Wall severs Palestinians from their lands, communities, and homes, while illegally appropriating more land and natural resources for Israeli colonies. In addition, Israel continues to expand illegal colonies in the Occupied West Bank. Since the ICJ issued its ruling on July 9, 2004 holding that the colonies are illegal, Israel has announced tenders for more than 2,300 housing units in the West Bank.

The success of Israel’s strategy became evident during a press conference on April 14, 2004, when U.S. President Bush, ostensibly in an effort to support the Gaza Plan, endorsed Israel’s plans to keep illegal West Bank colonies (which he termed “Israeli population centers”) in any permanent status agreement. President Bush further expressed U.S. opposition for Palestinian refugees’ right to return to homes and property inside Israel, which international law guarantees to them.  

Unlike the Gaza settlements, however, the West Bank settlements that Israel would keep “in exchange” for its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza house tens of thousands of illegal colonists and stretch many miles into Occupied Palestinian Territory. In fact, just as Israel has evacuated 8,500 settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank, it has embarked on plans to make room for 30,000 new settlers this year alone, primarily in and around occupied East Jerusalem.

Thus, Israel will demographically, and perhaps permanently, entrench its presence in the West Bank. Therefore, the Gaza withdrawal plan has less to do with what Israel is giving up in Gaza and more to do with what Israel plans on taking from the West Bank.

IV.    CONCLUSION: CONSTRUCTIVE SOLUTIONS

Israel will retain effective military, economic, and administrative control over the Gaza Strip and will therefore continue to occupy the Gaza Strip—even after implementation of its “Disengagement Plan” as proposed. Because Israel will continue to occupy Gaza, it will still be bound by the provisions of 1907’s Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Convention and relative international customary law.

This is not to say, however, that removing Gaza’s settlers or reducing the Israeli military presence in and around the Gaza Strip could not usher in a better age for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Palestinians appreciate any movement on Israel’s part towards compliance with international law. Compliance with international law brings Palestinians closer to liberation and the region closer to stability. By providing non-violent channels to achieve fair results, international law helps silence extremist positions and activity while bringing both sides closer to a negotiated peace. Additionally, respect for international law affirms the credibility of more powerful nations who routinely invoke it as the legitimate basis for their own actions.  

Israel’s “Disengagement” Plan however does not represent a good faith effort at advancing peace. Rather, Israel is selectively complying with some international legal standards in the Gaza Strip to preempt criticism for massive violations in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). In so doing, Israel ensures that the conflict will continue and perhaps intensify. If Israel maintains effective control over the Gaza Strip, denying it the ability to develop internally or trade externally, Gaza could become a greater humanitarian disaster than it already is. Or if Israel eventually proclaims Gaza the “State of Palestine,” the freedom guaranteed under international law might become ever more distant for Palestinians elsewhere.  

The international community should ensure that whatever unilateral measures Israel takes conform to international law and are not used to justify violations of international law elsewhere.  

Today, however, Israel is making room for over 30,000 new settlers in the occupied West Bank this year alone, especially in and around occupied East Jerusalem—or almost four times the number of settlers that were evacuated from the occupied Gaza Strip as part of “Disengagement.”  

We now have an historic opportunity for peace in the Middle East. Rather than an illegal declaration of an end of occupation on less than 4% of the Palestinian territory that Israel occupies, Israel should join the new Palestinian Leadership in negotiating an end of conflict.  

Peace is the best security for both Palestinians and Israelis and the only secure peace is an agreed peace. We know the contours of any final status agreement; we have the opportunity; and both the Palestinian and Israeli people have the will. An immediate return to bilateral negotiations, with the international community as mediator, would help to bring permanent and positive change to the Middle East.  


[1] Gaza “Disengagement” Plan, Section II.A.3, available at << http://www.nad-plo.org/gazaplan.php>>, last checked September 21, 2004.

[2] George W. Bush, Letter of Assurances to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,

[3] See, e.g., Dore Gold, From ‘Occupied Territories’ to ‘Disputed Territories, January, 2002, available at <http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp470.htm>, last checked July 25, 2004. Cf. Joel Singer, legal adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who stated after the signing of the Oslo Accords that “notwithstanding the transfer of a large portion of the powers and responsibilities currently exercised by Israel to Palestinian hands, the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will not be changed during the interim period.”  Joel Singer, “The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements,” I Justice 4, 6 (Int’l Assn of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, 1994). 

[4] Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulation concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, 3 Martens Nouveau Recueil (ser. 3) 461, 187 Consol. T.S. 227, entered into force Jan. 26, 1910, hereinafter “The Hague Convention.”

[5] Customary international law governs these basic obligations, which are articulated in 1907’s Hague Convention, 1949’s Fourth Geneva Convention, and 1977’s First Protocol to the Fourth Geneva Convention. 

[6] The Hague Conventions, see note 4 supra

[7] Robbie Savel, The Problematic Fourth Geneva Convention: Rethinking the International Law of Occupation, The Jurist, available at <http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew120.php>, last checked June 9, 2004 (asserting that the Hague Regulations have achieved status as customary international law—that is, a set of binding international norms recognized by the community of nations—and that most of the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and its 1st Additional Protocol have also achieved that status). 

[8] U.S. v. Wilhelm List, Nuremberg Tribunal, 1948.

[9] Geneva Convention relative to the protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 75 U.N.T.S 287 (1949); Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 1125 U.N.T.S. 3 (1979). 

[10] See note 21 supra and accompanying text. 

[11] Israel also assumed control over Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.  While Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, Israel still occupies Syria’s Golan Heights. 

[12] United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967).

[13] See, e.g., U.S. State Department Country Report on Israel and the Occupied Territories, 2003, released February 25, 2004, available at <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27929.htm#occterr>, last checked June 27, 2004 (referring to the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories”). 

[14] United Nations Security Council resolution 1544 (2004) (cites Israel’s obligations as an “occupying Power” under international law and references the Territories “occupied” since 1967); United Nations General Assembly resolution 58/292 (2004) (affirming “that the status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, remains one of military occupation”).  

[15] Israel, however, claims to have annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights pursuant to domestic Israeli law, which the international community has rejected en masse.  See, e.g., United Nations Security Council Resolution 252.    

[16] Although the Israeli Supreme Court does recognize Palestinian territories as “occupied” under international law, it does not recognize de jure application of the Fourth Geneva Convention, contrary to universal international opinio juris.  For a discussion on this distinction and its lack of legal foundation, see Claude Bruderlein, “Legal Aspects of Israel’s Disengagement Plan under International Humanitarian Law,” Harvard University Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (August, 2004).However, the Supreme Court selectively does apply some humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.  

[17] 606 Il. H.C. 78, Ayub, et al. v. Minister of Defence, et al. (The Beth Case); 610 Il. H.C. 78, Matawa et al. v. Minister of Defence, et al. (The Bekaot Case), reprinted in Antoine Bouvier and Marco Sassoli, How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law, International Committee of the Red Cross, pps. 812-817, Geneva, 1999, hereinafter “ICRC 1999.” Ironically, the Supreme Court terms the Palestinian Territories “occupied” so that it can confiscate Palestinian land: Under the Law of Occupation, the occupying power’s military boasts authority to temporarily confiscate land necessary to achieve military objectives.

[18] Adjuri v. IDF Commander, 7015 Il. H.C. 02, 7019 Il. H.C. 02 (2002). 

[19] 2056 Il. H.C. 04 (2004).

[20] Id. at  1.

[21] Int’l C.J. Advisory Opinion on the L. Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, at  112 (2004). 

[22] For more information on Israel’s Wall, please visit << http://www.nad-plo.org/wprimary.php>>, last checked July 4, 2004. 

[23] Agreement on Preparatory Powers and Responsibilities (August 9, 1994), Article XIII, Secs. 4, 5. 

[24] See notes 12-14 supra and accompanying text.

[25] Id. 

[26] See notes 15 et seq. and accompanying text, emphasizing, however, that the Israeli Supreme Court does not consider East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights to be “occupied,” since Israel unilaterally annexed those territories, which the international community recognizes as “null and void.”  See, e.g., United Nations Security Council Res. 478 (1980). 

[27] Int’l C.J. Advisory Opinion on the L. Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, at  78 (2004). 

[28] Sharon’s Gaza Disengagement Plan, May 28, 2004, Section III.A.3(stating that “[t]he State of Israel reserves the basic right to self defense, which includes taking preventive measures as well as the use of force against threats originating in the Gaza Strip”).

[29] Id. at Section III.A.1.

[30] Id. at Section VI.

[31] Id. at Section III.A.1.

[32] Id. generally.

[33] Claude Bruderlein, “Legal Aspects of Israel’s Disengagement Plan under International Humanitarian Law,” Harvard University Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (August, 2004), available upon request.   

[34] See note 4 supra and accompanying text. 

[35] U.S.A v. Wilhelm List, Nuremberg Tribunal, 1948. 

[36] See Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), Articles 47-49 and Protocol I to the Fourth Geneva Convention (1979).  

[37] See Int’l C.J. Advisory Opinion on the L. Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, at  123-26 (2004). 

[38] See Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), Article 6. 

[39] See Section II.A, supra

[40] See, e.g., International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention of the Rights of Child.  

[41] See, e.g., Jonathan Freedland, A Gift of Dust and Bones: Sharon’s Plan for a Pullout Owes More to Demographic Shifts than a Belated Conversion to Peace-Making, The Guardian, Wed. June 2, 2004.

[42] Id.

Document Type: Report
Country: Israel
Subject: Gaza StripPalestine questionPeace processSettlementsStatehood-related
Publication Date: 01/09/2005

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Gaza is still occupied territory

Opgeslagen onder Divers

[From 2004, published by the Russian Pravda]/The verdict of Israeli High Court regarding the Wall

Israel Palestine Wall Picture Picture

ASTRID ESSED: THE VERDICT OF ISRAELI HIGH COURTREGARDING THE WALL6 JULY 2004

https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/6077-israel/

pinion » Readers feedback

Dear Editor,

Astrid Essed: The verdict of Israeli high court regarding the Wall

The recent verdict of the Israeli High Court, which states that the building of the Israeli Wall at the West Bank must be adjusted with 30 kilometers because of the violations of human rights is not only a partial fullfilling of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population, but is also in contarily with International Law.

In the first place the motivation for the verdict is being based on the fact that because of the building of the Wall the inhabitants of the Beit Surik community had no entrance to their agricultural grounds and schools, but in the named verdict the Court doesn’t refer to the other Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank [85.000 people], who are likewise excluded from their agricultural grounds.

In the second place the Israeli building of the Wall is as such a violation of International Law, because it cuts deeply in the occupied Palestinian areas which is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 dd 1967 by which Israel was summoned  to withdraw from the in the june-war occupied Palestinian areas.

Further the building of the Wall is being made possible by hugh Palestinian landownings which is yet apart from the flagrant injustice a violation of International Law [the 4th Geneva Convention] which forbids land and house-ownings of ”protected people” [people who are living under an occupation] It is therefore highly recommendable, that the Israeli High Court adjusts its vedict according to the principles of International Law.


Astrid Essed
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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See more at https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/6077-israel/

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor [From 2004, published by the Russian Pravda]/The verdict of Israeli High Court regarding the Wall

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Published in the South China Morning Post!/EU welcoming of Ukrainian refugees in stark contrast with those from Middle East

People fleeing the war in Ukraine walk towards a train which will take them to Berlin from Karkow, Poland, on March 15. Of the roughly 3 million refugees forced to leave Ukraine, more than half have crossed into neighbouring Poland. Photo: TNS

People fleeing the war in Ukraine walk towards a train which will take them to Berlin from Karkow, Poland, on March 15. Of the roughly 3 million refugees forced to leave Ukraine, more than half have crossed into neighbouring Poland. Photo: TNShttps://www.astridessed.nl/published-in-the-south-china-morning-post-eu-welcoming-of-ukrainian-refugees-in-stark-contrast-with-those-from-middle-east/

https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3170656/eu-welcoming-ukrainian-refugees-stark-contrast-treatment-those

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POSTLETTERS: EU WELCOMING OF UKRAINIAN REFUGEES IN STARK CONTRAST WITH TREATMENT OF THOSE FROM

MIDDLE EAST

ASTRID ESSED

17 MARCH 2022
https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3170656/eu-welcoming-ukrainian-refugees-stark-contrast-treatment-those

Like most people who respect international law, I condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The UN General Assembly, the US and European Union are also right to condemn the invasion. However, the EU’s hypocrisy over the tragedy also stands out.

First, its sanctions against Russia go too far. They are causing ordinary people in Russia, who have nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s war policies, to suffer. Such collective punishment is not fair.

Even more dangerous is the fact that the EU and individual European countries are sending all sorts of military weaponry to Ukraine. This is provoking Russia and risks setting off a bigger war.

Putin’s reaction to EU sanctions has been to put his nuclear forces on high alert. This is no joke. He may also decide to turn off the gas tap to Europe, with disastrous consequences. The EU should stop putting peace at risk with such cowboy-like behaviour.

European countries have expressed their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. But while they are rightly doing everything they can to help Ukrainian refugees, what about the Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees who were trapped last year between the borders of Belarus and Poland, brutally pushed back by Polish border guards and abandoned to die in the winter cold?

The EU supported Poland in “defending” its borders. The same Poland that welcomes Ukrainian refugees is at this very moment building a wall to prevent refugees from the Middle East from entering. This is inhumane and also contrary to international law.

It’s very good that the EU is condemning the Russian invasion in Ukraine, but European countries must also stop provoking Russia by sending weaponry to Ukraine and start treating refugees from the Middle East as humanely as they do the Ukrainian refugees.

Astrid Essed, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Published in the South China Morning Post!/EU welcoming of Ukrainian refugees in stark contrast with those from Middle East

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[Adapted to new developments]/The Russian invasion in Ukraine/Putin, warcrimes and the EU hypocrisy

De Russische president Poetin en zijn Oekraïense collega Zelensky ontmoeten elkaar vandaag voor het eerst. Tijdens een top in Parijs staat beëindiging van de oorlog in Oost-Oekraïne op de agenda.

THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN AND UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT ZELENSKY

DOUBLE STANDARDS

UKRAIANIAN REFUGEES ARE WELCOME AND REFUGEES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST ARE PUSHBACKED

BY POLISH BORDER GUARDS

CARTOON ABOVE FROM SEM JANSSEN

THE RUSSIAN INVASION IN UKRAINE, PUTIN, WARCRIMES AND

THE EU HYPOCRISY

READERS!


Underlying  my Letter to the Editor about the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

As you know, I sent a similar Letter to the Editor to  several European [includingRussian newspapers!] and international newspapers before. [1]

Now you’ll read my adapted [to new actualities] Letter to the Editor, which I sent to several African, Chinese, Indian and other newspapers.

ENJOY!

ASTRID ESSED

[1]

SENT BEFORE:

THE RUSSIAN INVASION IN UKRAINE/PUTIN AND THE

EU HYPOCRISY

ASTRID ESSED

NEW VERSION

THE RUSSIAN INVASION IN UKRAINE/PUTIN, WARCRIMES AND

THE EU HYPOCRISYLETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor,

As most people, who have a fundamental respect for International Law,I condemn the Russian attack on the Ukraine as a violationof the sovereignty.Therefore international condemnations, like those of the United NationsGeneral Assembly, the USA and the European Union, are the right thing to do.The Russian army also bombed with internationally forbidden clustermunitions,which by the way the US and Great Britian also did in Iraq and Afghanistan.In both cases-The Russian and the USA-it costed civilian deaths, which makes it a warcrime.
However there are more sides on this case, among else the EU hypocrisy regarding the Ukrainian tragedy.But firstly the EU economic sanctions against Russia::They go too far, sincethe common Russian man and woman, who have nothing to do withPutin’s war policies, are suffering from them.That’s close to a collective punishment and not fair at all!Even more dangerous is the fact, that different EU countries are sendingall sort of military weaponry to the Ukraine, since it is provoking Russia and brings a major war closer and closer.Very irresponsible, because Putin’s first reaction on those EU sanctions-to order his nuclear forces on high alert-is no joke.

He also can decide to turn off the gas tap to Europe, with desastrousconsequences.

Therefore EU should stop putting peace at risk by such cowboylike behaviour.
But there is more:Because with all those seemingly sympathetic EU actions, aiming toexpress ”solidarity” with the Ukrainian people, the EU is full of hypocrisy:
Because, when the USA and the EU really respected International Law,as they claim to do in the Ukraine case, why they never sanctioned Israel,that is a champion in violating International Law with its illegaloccupation of the Palestinian territories and their illegal settlement policy?
And to stay closer at the USA and EU:
What about their own violations of International Law, like the thenBritish-American invasion of Iraq, which was contrary with International Law?And perhaps the most bitter part of all: 

The refugee issue:


While EU countries are doing everything they can to help Ukrainianrefugees-which is the right thing to do-last year, Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees, who were trapped between the border of Belarus and Poland,were brutally attacked and pushbacked by Polish military guards, sometimes shooted at and abandoned in the wintercold to die there.
With the blessing of the EU, that supported Poland in ”defending it’s borders”The same Poland, that welcomes Ukrainian refugees, is on this very momentbuilding a Wall to prevent refugees from the Middle East to enter it’s border.Inhumane and also contrary with International Law!

So very good, that the EU/USA combination [united in the NATO] is condemning the Russian invasion in Ukraine, but EU, stop provoking Russia by sending weaponry to the Ukraine and treat the remaining or future refugees fromthe Middle East as humane as now the Urkrainian refugees.

Otherwise the EU is sinning against their own EU Treaties!’
Astrid Essed

Amsterdam

The Netherlands

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[From 2003/Astrid Essed]/Warcrimes in Iraq were widespread

Usa Army Soldiers in Iraq

DOWNLOAD PREVIEW

US Army Soldiers check at Checkpoint in Mahmur Village,Kurdistan,Iraq.

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=1966855&ref=mobile

KOREA JOONGANG DAILY
WARCRIMES IN IRAQ WERE WIDESPREAD[LETTERSTO THE EDITOR]/WARCRIMES IN IRAQ WERE WIDESPREAD

17 APRIL 2003
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=1966855&ref=mobile

Although I fully agree with holding a trial for leaders of the former Iraqi regime, it is a matter of justice that British and Americans also be put on trial for war crimes.
In their air strikes, the United States and Britain used cluster bombs, which are internationally forbidden by the Treaty of Ottawa because of the big risk to civilians. According to international law, the use of weapons with an enlarged risk for civilians is a war crime.
Several times Iraqi civilians were shot by American troops at checkpoints. The justification by military spokesmen, referring to a suicide attack by an Iraqi soldier in civilian clothes, made no sense, because shooting civilians is always a war crime, according to international law.

by Astrid Essed

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor [From 2003/Astrid Essed]/Warcrimes in Iraq were widespread

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Voice from the Past!/Letter to the Editor, sent and published by Pravda/”The verdict of the Israeli High Court regarding the Wall”

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, SENT TO AND PUBLISHED BY THE PRAVDA/THE VERDICT OF ISRAELI HIGH COURT REGARDING THE WALL6 JULY 2004

The Israeli separation barrier divides East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank town of Qalandia. [File: Thomas Coex/AFP]

The Israeli separation barrier divides East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank town of Qalandia. [File: Thomas Coex/AFP]
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2020/7/8/in-pictures-israels-illegal-separation-wall-still-divides

INTRODUCTION
READERSIsn’t it interesting, when roaming the Internet, to find an old article ofyourself, that you almost forgot!It goes about a Letter to the Editor I wrote in the past [2004] to the webzine”The Pravda” and that they apparently published.Not only is that interesting, but more interesting is the fact, that I wrote about averdict of the Israeli High Court about the building of the Israeli Apartheid Wall [1]You all know, of course, the more known verdict of the International Court ofJustice, declaring the Wall illegal for once and for all [2] but few people[I almost forgot!] will remember, that the Israeli High Court gave also its opinion,in fact supporting the building of the Wall, except for some minor point of criticism [3]And here it is, this voice of the past from Astrid Essed, protesting against theverdict of the Israeli High Court!See directly below
And see for the notes, under my almost forgotten Letter to the Editor!
ENJOY IT!
ASTRID ESSED

ASTRID ESSED: THE VERDICT OF ISRAELI HIGH COURT REGARDING THE WALL6 JULY 2004

Astrid Essed: The verdict of Israeli high court regarding the Wall
Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/6077-israel/

https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/6077-israel/

Dear Editor,

The recent verdict of the Israeli High Court, which states that the building of the Israeli Wall at the West Bank must be adjusted with 30 kilometers because of the violations of human rights is not only a partial fullfilling of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population, but is also in contarily with International Law.

In the first place the motivation for the verdict is being based on the fact that because of the building of the Wall the inhabitants of the Beit Surik community had no entrance to their agricultural grounds and schools, but in the named verdict the Court doesn’t refer to the other Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank [85.000 people], who are likewise excluded from their agricultural grounds.

In the second place the Israeli building of the Wall is as such a violation of International Law, because it cuts deeply in the occupied Palestinian areas which is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 dd 1967 by which Israel was summoned  to withdraw from the in the june-war occupied Palestinian areas.

Further the building of the Wall is being made possible by hugh Palestinian landownings which is yet apart from the flagrant injustice a violation of International Law [the 4th Geneva Convention] which forbids land and house-ownings of ”protected people” [people who are living under an occupation] It is therefore highly recommendable, that the Israeli High Court adjusts its vedict according to the principles of International Law.


Astrid Essed
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/6077-israel/

NOTES, AT ”INTRODUCTION”

[1]
WIKIPEDIAISRAELI WEST BANK BARRIER
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier

Annexation

”While Israel is heading for de jure annexation, the Wall is an important tool of Israel’s illegal and ongoing de facto annexation. The Wall’s path and its associated regime are planned to de facto annex some 46% of the West Bank, isolating communities into Bantustans, ghettos and “military zones.” 
STOP THE WALL.ORG
https://stopthewall.org/the-wall/

[2]

”In December 2003, Resolution ES-10/14 was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in an emergency special session.[111] 90 states voted for, 8 against, 74 abstained.[111] The resolution included a request to the International Court of Justice to urgently render an advisory opinion on the following question.[111]

“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary-General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?”[111]

The court concluded that the barrier violated international law”

WIKIPEDIA

ISRAELI WEST BANK BARRIER/OPINIONS OF THE BARRIER

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier#Opinions_of_the_barrier

ORIGINAL SOURCE

WIKIPEDIA

ISRAELI WEST BANK BARRIER

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURTLEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE INSTRUCTION OF A WALL INTHE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORYOVERVIEW OF THE CASE
https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/131

OVERVIEW OF THE CASE

By resolution ES-10/14, adopted on 8 December 2003 at its Tenth Emergency Special Session, the General Assembly decided to request the Court for an advisory opinion on the following question :

“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the Report of the Secretary-General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions ?”

The resolution requested the Court to render its opinion “urgently”. The Court decided that all States entitled to appear before it, as well as Palestine, the United Nations and subsequently, at their request, the League of Arab States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, were likely to be able to furnish information on the question in accordance with Article 66, paragraphs 2 and 3, of the Statute. Written statements were submitted by 45 States and four international organizations, including the European Union. At the oral proceedings, which were held from 23 to 25 February 2004, 12 States, Palestine and two international organizations made oral submissions. The Court rendered its Advisory Opinion on 9 July 2004.

The Court began by finding that the General Assembly, which had requested the advisory opinion, was authorized to do so under Article 96, paragraph 1, of the Charter. It further found that the question asked of it fell within the competence of the General Assembly pursuant to Articles 10, paragraph 2, and 11 of the Charter. Moreover, in requesting an opinion of the Court, the General Assembly had not exceeded its competence, as qualified by Article 12, paragraph 1, of the Charter, which provides that while the Security Council is exercising its functions in respect of any dispute or situation the Assembly must not make any recommendation with regard thereto unless the Security Council so requests. The Court further observed that the General Assembly had adopted resolution ES-10/14 during its Tenth Emergency Special Session, convened pursuant to resolution 377 A (V), whereby, in the event that the Security Council has failed to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, the General Assembly may consider the matter immediately with a view to making recommendations to Member States. Rejecting a number of procedural objections, the Court found that the conditions laid down by that resolution had been met when the Tenth Emergency Special Session was convened, and in particular when the General Assembly decided to request the opinion, as the Security Council had at that time been unable to adopt a resolution concerning the construction of the wall as a result of the negative vote of a permanent member. Lastly, the Court rejected the argument that an opinion could not be given in the present case on the ground that the question posed was not a legal one, or that it was of an abstract or political nature.

Having established its jurisdiction, the Court then considered the propriety of giving the requested opinion. It recalled that lack of consent by a State to its contentious jurisdiction had no bearing on its advisory jurisdiction, and that the giving of an opinion in the present case would not have the effect of circumventing the principle of consent to judicial settlement, since the subject-matter of the request was located in a much broader frame of reference than that of the bilateral dispute between Israel and Palestine, and was of direct concern to the United Nations. Nor did the Court accept the contention that it should decline to give the advisory opinion requested because its opinion could impede a political, negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It further found that it had before it sufficient information and evidence to enable it to give its opinion, and empha- sized that it was for the General Assembly to assess the opinion’s usefulness. The Court accordingly concluded that there was no compelling reason precluding it from giving the requested opinion.

Turning to the question of the legality under international law of the construction of the wall by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Court first determined the rules and principles of international law relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly. After recalling the customary principles laid down in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter and in General Assembly resolution 2625 (XXV), which prohibit the threat or use of force and emphasize the illegality of any territorial acquisition by such means, the Court further cited the principle of self-determination of peoples, as enshrined in the Charter and reaffirmed by resolution 2625 (XXV). In relation to international humanitarian law, the Court then referred to the provisions of the Hague Regulations of 1907, which it found to have become part of customary law, as well as to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, holding that these were applicable in those Palestinian territories which, before the armed conflict of 1967, lay to the east of the 1949 Armistice demarcation line (or “Green Line”) and were occupied by Israel during that conflict. The Court further established that certain human rights instruments (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) were applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The Court then sought to ascertain whether the construction of the wall had violated the above-mentioned rules and principles. Noting that the route of the wall encompassed some 80 per cent of the settlers living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Court, citing statements by the Security Council in that regard in relation to the Fourth Geneva Convention, recalled that those settlements had been established in breach of international law. After considering certain fears expressed to it that the route of the wall would prejudge the future frontier between Israel and Palestine, the Court observed that the construction of the wall and its associated régime created a “fait accompli” on the ground that could well become permanent, and hence tantamount to a de facto annexation. Noting further that the route chosen for the wall gave expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements and entailed further alterations to the demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the Court concluded that the construction of the wall, along with measures taken previously, severely impeded the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination and was thus a breach of Israel’s obligation to respect that right.

The Court then went on to consider the impact of the construction of the wall on the daily life of the inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, finding that the construction of the wall and its associated régime were contrary to the relevant provisions of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and of the Fourth Geneva Convention and that they impeded the liberty of movement of the inhabitants of the territory as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as their exercise of the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Court further found that, coupled with the establishment of settlements, the construction of the wall and its associated régime were tending to alter the demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, thereby contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention and the relevant Security Council resolutions. The Court then considered the qualifying clauses or provisions for derogation contained in certain humanitarian law and human rights instruments, which might be invoked inter alia where military exigencies or the needs of national security or public order so required. The Court found that such clauses were not applicable in the present case, stating that it was not convinced that the specific course Israel had chosen for the wall was necessary to attain its security objectives, and that accordingly the construction of the wall constituted a breach by Israel of certain of its obligations under humanitarian and human rights law. Lastly, the Court concluded that Israel could not rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall, and that such construction and its associated régime were accordingly contrary to international law.

The Court went on to consider the consequences of these violations, recalling Israel’s obligation to respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and its obligations under humanitarian and human rights law. The Court stated that Israel must put an immediate end to the violation of its international obligations by ceasing the works of construction of the wall and dismantling those parts of that structure situated within Occupied Palestinian Territory and repealing or rendering ineffective all legislative and regulatory acts adopted with a view to construction of the wall and establishment of its associated régime. The Court further made it clear that Israel must make reparation for all damage suffered by all natural or legal persons affected by the wall’s construction. As regards the legal consequences for other States, the Court held that all States were under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It further stated that it was for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination be brought to an end. In addition, the Court pointed out that all States parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention were under an obligation, while respecting the Charter and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention. Finally, in regard to the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council, the Court indicated that they should consider what further action was required to bring to an end the illegal situation in question, taking due account of the present Advisory Opinion.

The Court concluded by observing that the construction of the wall must be placed in a more general context, noting the obligation on Israel and Palestine to comply with international humanitarian law, as well as the need for implementation in good faith of all relevant Security Council resolutions, and drawing the attention of the General Assembly to the need for efforts to be encouraged with a view to achieving a negotiated solution to the outstanding problems on the basis of international law and the establishment of a Palestinian State.[3]

”Of course this is not to say that that the Israeli ruling is a good one. For example, like many Israeli rulings there are political points that are treated as legal ones, such as the false characterization of all Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” [8]. Further the HCJ does justify the Wall in principle though the projected segments reviewed were deemed to be illegal because of the humanitarian impact of the suggested route [9]”
ELECTRONIC INTIFADATHE ISRAELI HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE AND THE APARTHEID WALL15 JULY 2004
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-high-court-justice-and-apartheid-wall/5156

With the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion regarding the consequences of the Apartheid Wall, the legality of this enterprise has been much discussed in almost all circles related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. On the Zionist side, aside from the usual canard about the “anti-Semitism” of the United Nations and the like, many commentaries have pointed to the recent Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) ruling about the wall and declared, in so many words, that this is the only legal ruling that matters. For example, in the recent diatribe against the ICJ by Alan Dershowitz [1] he writes: “The Israeli government has both a legal and a moral obligation to comply with the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision regarding the security fence.”

The interesting thing about this is that if one actually reads the HCJ decision [2], it in fact makes a very strong case against the Wall in general though its ruling only regarded only one small 40 km stretch of the Wall. Unlike the ICJ Opinion which was, as per its mandate, primarily focused on existing international treaties and conventions and Israel’s obligations stemming from them; the HCJ decision was based more on general legal principle.

The Israeli case – Beit Sourik Village Council v. The Government of Israel, Commander of the IDF Forces in the West Bank – was a petition against eight separate land confiscation orders for the building of the Wall. The net result was that seven of these eight confiscation orders were deemed illegal and the one that was upheld was only upheld because the petitioners didn’t really argue against it [4].

Key point that resulted in the declaration that these confiscation orders were illegal was the principle of “proportionality” that was very succinctly defined in the ruling itself. [5] The actual factors taken into account were essentially the same that served as the basis of the ICJ Advisory Opinion, specifically the human impact that the Wall had on the resident Palestinian population [6]. The question and standard, treated as the third element of proportionality, deserves to be recalled in full (citations removed):

“The third subtest examines whether the injury caused to the local inhabitants by the construction of the separation fence stands in proper proportion to the security benefit from the the [sic] security fence in its chosen route. This is the proportionate means test (or proportionality “in the narrow sense”). Concerning this topic, Professor Y. Zamir wrote:

“The third element is proportionality itself. According to this element, it is insufficient that the administrative authority chose the proper and most moderate means for achieving the objective; it must also weigh the benefit reaped by the public against the damage that will be caused to the citizen by this means under the circumstances of the case at hand. It must ask itself if, under these circumstances, there is a proper proportion between the benefit to the public and the damage to the citizen. The proportion between the benefit and the damage – and it is also possible to say the proportion between means and objective – must be proportionate.

“This subtest weighs the costs against the benefits. According to this subtest, a decision of an administrative authority must reach a reasonable balance between communal needs and the damage done to the individual. The objective of the examination is to determine whether the severity of the damage to the individual and the reasons brought to justify it stand in proper proportion to each other. This judgment is made against the background of the general normative structure of the legal system, which recognizes human rights and the necessity of ensuring the provision of the needs and welfare of the local inhabitants, and which preserves “family honour and rights” (Regulation 46 of the Hague Regulations). All these are protected in the framework of the humanitarian provisions of the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Convention. The question before us is: does the severity of the injury to local inhabitants, by the construction of the separation fence along the route determine d by the military commander, stand in reasonable (proper) proportion to the security benefit from the construction of the fence along that route?” [7]

It was on this basis that the HCJ ruled seven of the eight confiscation orders under review to be illegal. Were this same principle to be applied to most of the Wall as it exists today, especially in cases like that of the Qalqilya ghetto, it is pretty reasonable to assume that most, if not all, the Wall would be deemed illegal. Better yet, the proportionality argument is generally accepted in all modern legal systems, unlike the more specific treaty/convention law that the ICJ was forced to focus on.

Of course this is not to say that that the Israeli ruling is a good one. For example, like many Israeli rulings there are political points that are treated as legal ones, such as the false characterization of all Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” [8]. Further the HCJ does justify the Wall in principle though the projected segments reviewed were deemed to be illegal because of the humanitarian impact of the suggested route [9].

Further, citing the usual excuse used by the HCJ in regard to IDF decisions, it seeks merely to review military actions for their illegality, not to actually impose its judgment on the IDF [10]. This is, along with the IDF option of utilizing the Emergency Regulations, one of the methods allowed to the IDF to freely disregard the High Court of Justice when so inclined. As was the case in the famous court ruling against torture, that in fact merely amounted to a slight change in the phrasing of the IDF terminology, i.e. “ticking bomb” justification, the court’s ruling can be safely ignored if the government chooses – for whatever reason – not to enforce it. This is one of the luxuries of being a non-constitutional state; the political executive is under no actual obligation to enforce any law or legal ruling. In the ruling itself, the IDF freely concedes that should some portion of the fence that is already constructed be deemed illegal, they will pay compensation, but there is no mention – much less compulsion – to reverse illegal sections or the Wall or to in fact stop committing the construction even if deemed illegal. [11]

Nevertheless, in order to portray itself as being a state that respects the rule of law, High Court of Justice rulings are usually afforded at least some general consideration. Thus the HCJ ruling in Beit Sourik Village Council v. The Government of Israel, Commander of the IDF Forces in the West Bank, is in fact a rather grave embarrassment since the projected Wall cannot be constructed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at all without inflicting the same disproportionate – and hence illegal – circumstances on other local Palestinians. So how do they intend to reconcile this ruling with the Wall?

The Jerusalem Post provided the answer to this question on July 14: “A petition against the appropriation of land for construction of the security fence near the Kissufim road in the Gaza Strip was turned down Tuesday by the High Court of Justice. The petition was submitted by Palestinian residents of the al-Karara village in the Gaza Strip. According to IBA news, the ruling also cancels a freeze order on construction in the area.” [12] Since the HCJ ruling only related to one small segment of the Wall, and the determination has already been made, the HCJ can now simply refuse to accept further petitions, based on the argument that the IDF should be assumed to be taking the same proportionality concerns into account in other areas. That is, in so many words, it seems unlikely that there will be an option of legal appeal to any other segments of the Wall, based on the assumption that the IDF will act in “good faith” taking the previous ruling into consideration. Thus, yet agai n, we have another High Court of Justice ruling that can be safely ignored.

Make no mistake about it, the Israeli High Court of Justice is no friend to Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Nevertheless, when Zionists and others choose to counter the ICJ Advisory Opinion citing the HCJ ruling, one can – in all honesty – point out that if the HCJ ruling was in fact applied to the entire Wall, most of it would be illegal even under Israeli law. Of course this won’t happen, and even if it did the IDF is under no obligation to comply anyway, nevertheless, for the scoundrels out to justify the legality of the Wall, the High Court of Justice ruling is certainly no help.
END OF THE ARTICLE

END OF THE NOTES

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Voice from the Past!/Letter to the Editor, sent and published by Pravda/”The verdict of the Israeli High Court regarding the Wall”

Opgeslagen onder Divers

A Chronicle of Israeli prison brutality in Ketzion prison/Letter to the members of the Dutch parliament

A CHRONICLE OF ISRAELI PRISON BRUTALITY IN KETZION PRISON/LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DUTCH PARLIAMENT

Screenshot from video about prison brutality in Ketzion prison, revealed by Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.9890422?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=Android_Native&utm_campaign=Share

HEBREW EDITION OF THE HAARETZ WITH PICTURES OF THE MISTREATMENT

YOUTUBE FILM ABOUT THE MISTREATMENT


Dear Readers
Underlying letter I wrote recently to the members of the Dutch parliament about thestructural mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.Here a ghastly example of prisoner mistreatment, revealed by the Israeli newpaperthe Haaretz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cq5UjR_NB0

SEE THE HEBREW EDITION OF THE HAARETZ, WHERE THE PICTURES HAVE BEEN PUBLICIZED
https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.9890422?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=Android_Native&utm_campaign=Share

Below the English translation of my letter to the Dutch parliament

Astrid Essed

LETTER:

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DUTCH PARLIAMENT,
SEE THE DUTCH LETTER
TREEDT OP TEGEN MISHANDELING PALESTIJNSE GEVANGENEN/BRIEF AAN TWEEDE KAMERLEDEN 
[English translation:STAND UP AGAINST MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS/LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE DUTCH PARLIAMENT]
https://www.astridessed.nl/treedt-op-tegen-mishandeling-palestijnse-gevangenen-brief-aan-tweede-kamerleden/

Subject:Israeli  violent conduct against Palestinian prisoners
[This mail has been sent to all your collegue members of parliament, except forthe parties, The Party for Freedom, Forum for Democracy, the Reformed Political Party and JA21, concerning their pro Israel views
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_for_Democracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JA21

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
As you’ll probably know, I write you regularly about the injustice concerning the Middle Eastern conflict and about other cases, concerning human rights. [1]Often I refer extensively to international law aspects [2] 
However, in this case I try to make it short[er], because the case is simple here:This concerns a shocking case of abuse and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners and I demand you to use your influence, as fae as possible, to stop this!Here and now!
SCHOKKENDE BEELDEN/MISHANDELING PALESTIJNSE GEVANGENEN
The news reached me about the shocking mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prison Ketziot [3] and the pictures were publicized by the Israeli newspaper the Haaretz in its Hebrew edition. [4]
Mij bereikte het bericht over de schokkende mishandeling van Palestijnsegevangenen in de Israelische gevangenis Ketziot [3] en de beelden daarvan werden gepubliceerd door de Israelische krant de Haaretz in zijnHebreeuwse editie [4]See also the Youtube images! [5]
What you see is obvious.Prisoners are dragged over the ground, thrown in a heap and beaten.What you see is unacceptable!
The case, dating from 2019 [6], revealed by the Haaretz [which I appreciate], was ”investigated”I write ”investigated” with quotation marks, because there was noreal investigation, but it was ”swept under the rug” [7]
In an editorial article The Haaretz writes:

”It wasn’t only the Prison Service that looked the other way. In the Israel Police, Lahav 433’s National Prison Investigation Unit did as little as possible to probe the affair: Only one guard was questioned and even though he admitted that he had engaged in gratuitous violence, it wasn’t enough for the police or prosecutors to proceed with an indictment. This was a negligent investigation – with no real effort to identify the guards and no police lineup – which proves that even when such an unusual case of abuse has been fully documented, the police still prefer to sweep it under the rug. [8]
AND
”It’s hard to believe that the investigation would have ended this way if the prisoners had been Jews. But in this case, the victims were Palestinian terrorists and security prisoners belonging to Hamas. Therefore, not only was the case closed on the grounds that “the offender is not known,” but the warden on duty at the time, General Avichai Ben-Hamo, was promoted to the rank of major general. The other guards allegedly involved in the incident remain at their jobs.” [9]
STRUCTURAL
Although this incident in itself is serious enough, itdoes not stand alone.No, this violent behaviour against Palestinian prisonersis structural!Amnesty International writes in its review from 2020 among else:””The Israeli authorities arbitrarily detained in Israel thousands of Palestinians from the OPT, holding hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, were committed with impunity.” [10]
This is a very serious matter!You must act against this, dear members of parliament, because I don’t have to explain to you, that yet apart from the humanity, those violent acts are contrary with the International Treaties! [11]
YOUR EFFORT AND MORAL DUTY
I expect from you, members of the Parliament, that you stand up againstthis structural violence against Palestinian prisoners, which also includes torture by violence. [12]Use your political power by posing questions in the Parliament and makinga plea for the suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, that includes a human rights clausule [13], in case Israel doesn’t listen.
Too long this injustice had its chance and you can’t walk away from it!You swore an Oath or did a promise on the Dutch Constitution, which states in article 90:”The Government shall promote the development of the international legal order.” [14]

I count on your efforts.
Kind greetings
Astrid EssedAmsterdamThe Netherlands

THOSE ARE THE POLITICAL PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES I WROTE TO, EXCEPT FOR THOSEI MENTIONED IN THE INTRODUCTION

WIKIPEDIALIST OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NETHERLANDS/GENERAL OVERVIEW
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_Netherlands#General_overview

ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIALIST OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NETHERLANDS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_Netherlands

NOTES
[1]

ISRAELI OCCUPATION AND PALESTINIAN RIGHTS/LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENTASTRID ESSED4 FEBRUARY 2019
https://www.astridessed.nl/israeli-occupation-and-palestinian-rights-letter-to-the-members-of-the-dutch-parliament/

SEE ALSO IN DUTCH
ISRAELISCHE BOMBARDEMENTEN OP GAZA IN MEI 2021/TERREUR IN OOST-JERUZALEM EN DE WESTBANK/BRIEF AAN TWEEDE KAMERLEDEN/STOP ISRAELISCHE TERREUR!/STOP DE BEZETTING!ASTRID ESSED18 MEI 2021

[TRANSLATION: ISRAELI BOMBINGS ON GAZA IN MAY 2021/TERROR IN EASTERN JERUSALEM AND THE WESTBANK/LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OFPARLIAMENT/STOP ISRAELI TERROR/STOP THE OCCUPATION!]
https://www.astridessed.nl/israelische-bombardementen-op-gaza-in-mei-2021-terreur-in-oost-jeruzalem-en-de-west-bank-brief-aan-tweede-kamerleden-stop-israelische-terreur-stop-de-bezetting/

CORONAVIRUS BEREIKT LESBOS/POLITIEK, EVACUEER OVERVOL VLUCHTELINGENKAMP MORIA OP LESBOS!/BRIEF AAN TWEEDE KAMERLEDEN

ASTRID ESSED

22 MAART 2020

[TRANSLATION:

CORONAVIRUS IN LESBOS/POLITICAL LEADERS, ECAVUATE THE

CROWDED REFUGEE CAMP MORIA AT LESBOS/LETTER TO

THE MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT]

[2]
SEE NOTE 1

[3]

WIKIPEDIAKETZIOT PRISON

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ktzi%27ot_Prison

[4]

HEBREW EDITION OF THE HAARETZ WITH PICTURES OFISRAELI VIOLENCE AGAINST PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.9890422?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=Android_Native&utm_campaign=Share

[5]
YOUTUBEFROM INSIDE OF AL NAQBA PRISON

[6]

””De beelden dateren uit 2019 en zijn naar buiten gebracht door de Israëlische krant Haaretz in zijn Hebreeuwse editie. Ze tonen de mishandeling van een kleine zestig Palestijnse gevangenen door zo’n vijftien gevangenisbewaarders in de C-vleugel van de Ketziot-gevangenis in de Negev/Naqab in Israël.”
[TRANSLATION:The images are from 2019 and have been revealed by the Israeli paperHaaretz in its Hebrew edition. They show the mistreatment of about 60 Palestinian prisoners by about 15 jailers in the C wing ofthe Ketziot prison in the Negev/Naqba in Israel”’
ARTICLE FROM THE RIGHTS FORUM
THE RIGHTS FORUMSCHOKKENDE BEELDEN VAN MISHANDELING PALESTIJNSE GEVANGENEN IN ISRAELISCHE GEVANGENIS

[TRANSLATION]SHOCKING IMAGES OF MISTREATMENT PALESTINIAN PRISONERS IN ISRAELI PRISON]11 JUNE 2021
https://rightsforum.org/nieuws/schokkende-beelden-van-mishandeling-palestijnse-gevangenen-in-israelische-gevangenis/

TEXT [IN DUTCH]

Tientallen gevangenen worden geboeid over de grond gesleurd, op een hoop gegooid en afgeranseld. De zaak verdween in de doofpot, en dat is geen uitzondering.

De beelden dateren uit 2019 en zijn naar buiten gebracht door de Israëlische krant Haaretz in zijn Hebreeuwse editie. Ze tonen de mishandeling van een kleine zestig Palestijnse gevangenen door zo’n vijftien gevangenisbewaarders in de C-vleugel van de Ketziot-gevangenis in de Negev/Naqab in Israël. De gevangenen worden geboeid over de betonnen vloer gesleept, boven op elkaar gegooid, geschopt en met wapenstokken geslagen. Vijftien gevangenen raakten zodanig gewond dat ze in het ziekenhuis belandden. De beelden roepen herinneringen op aan de mishandeling van Iraakse gevangenen door Amerikaanse militairen en CIA-medewerkers in de Abu Ghraib-gevangenis bij Bagdad in 2004.

Doofpot

In zijn redactioneel commentaar schrijft Haaretz dat het geweld kennelijk een wraakactie was voor het neersteken van een bewaarder elders in het gevangeniscomplex – volgens Wikipedia het grootste detentiecentrum van Israël en zelfs ter wereld. De Israel Prison Service maakte destijds bekend dat veiligheidstroepen op de bewuste dag ‘een opstand van gevangenen onder controle hadden gebracht’. Op de beelden is van een opstand echter niets te zien.

De zaak is door de autoriteiten in de doofpot gestopt, schrijft Haaretz. De Prison Service ‘keek de andere kant op’ en de onderzoeksafdeling van de Israëlische politie – de National Prison Investigation Unit – volstond met het ondervragen van één gevangenisbewaarder. Hoewel die toegaf zich schuldig te hebben gemaakt aan ‘onnodig geweld’, werd geen vervolging ingesteld. De zaak werd gesloten onder het mom dat ‘de dader onbekend is’.

De politie ‘veegde de zaak onder het tapijt’, concludeert Haaretz, en ook de openbaar aanklager kwam niet in actie. ‘Het is moeilijk voor te stellen dat het zo zou zijn gelopen als de gevangenen Joden waren geweest’, voegt de krant daaraan toe. In dit geval ging het echter om ‘terroristen en veiligheidsgevangenen die lid waren van Hamas’.

Geen uitzondering, maar regel

Overigens betekent dat niet dat de gevangenen daadwerkelijk lid waren van Hamas en een misdaad op hun geweten hebben. Afgelopen jaar besteedden wij in een brede analyse aandacht aan het oppakken van Palestijnen onder het mom van ‘betrokkenheid bij terrorisme’. Onder die noemer verdwijnen aan de lopende band Palestijnen uit de door Israël bezette gebieden in Israëlische gevangenissen. Het is onderdeel van ‘het intimideren en terroriseren van de bevolking door het Israëlische bezettingsregime’, concludeerden wij.

Daarop wijst vandaag ook de vooraanstaande Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisatie B’Tselem. In een persbericht schrijft het dat het ‘witwassen’ van de zaak door de autoriteiten geen uitzondering is, maar regel: de Israëlische overheersing van de Palestijnen is gebaseerd op geweld en het witwassen daarvan. De nu naar buiten gekomen zaak onderstreept volgens B’Tselem het belang van onderzoek en vervolging door internationale gerechtshoven als het Internationaal Gerechtshof en het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag:

Het Israëlische apartheidsregime is gebaseerd op constant, georganiseerd geweld tegen Palestijnen. Dat geweld is cruciaal voor zijn voortbestaan. Daarom is het regime noch bereid, noch in staat om degenen die het geweld plannen en uitvoeren te onderzoeken, laat staan te vervolgen. […] De zaak bewijst eens te meer dat Palestijnse slachtoffers van geweld van Israëlische veiligheidstroepen binnen het bestaande Israëlische systeem geen gerechtigheid kunnen krijgen, en alleen kunnen hopen op behandeling van hun zaken door internationale gerechtshoven.

Mishandeling schering en inslag

Het mishandelen en martelen van Palestijnse ‘verdachten’ en ‘veiligheidsgevangenen’ is in Israëlische ondervragings- en detentiecentra schering en inslag. Het Israëlische Hooggerechtshof staat echter ‘speciale ondervragings­methoden’ toe als er sprake is van ‘bijzondere veiligheidsrisico’s’, en die bepaling biedt politiediensten, de Prison Service en de veiligheidsdienst Shin Bet een vrijbrief om verdachten te mishandelen zonder dat er een haan naar kraait. Het Israëlische Comité tegen Marteling (PCATI) diende tussen 2001 en 2020 circa 1300 officiële klachten wegens marteling door de Shin Bet in. Dat leidde in slechts één geval tot strafrechtelijk onderzoek, dat uitliep op seponering.

Het martelen van gevangenen is onder internationaal recht en de Universele Verklaring van de Rechten van de Mens strikt verboden en geldt in het oprichtingsverdrag van het Internationaal Strafhof – het Statuut van Rome – als een oorlogsmisdaad. Eerder dit jaar maanden zeven mensenrechtenexperts van de VN Israël zich aan het internationaal recht te houden en rigoureus een eind te maken aan de verboden praktijken. De autoriteiten dienen alle wetten, voorschriften, beleidslijnen en praktijken die zulke misdaden mogelijk maken met spoed te herzien. Staten zijn verplicht marteling en mishandeling te voorkomen en, in het geval zulk wangedrag toch plaatsvindt, te bestraffen. Slachtoffers dienen gerehabiliteerd en gecompenseerd te worden.

END OF ARTICLE

[7]

”This was a negligent investigation – with no real effort to identify the guards and no police lineup – which proves that even when such an unusual case of abuse has been fully documented, the police still prefer to sweep it under the rug.”

HAARETZ

A CHRONICLE OF PRISON BRUTALITY IN ISRAEL

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/a-chronicle-of-prison-brutality-of-israel-1.9894625

The shocking video from Wing 3 of Ketziot Prison should have set off an earthquake in the Israel Prison Service, police and the State Prosecutor’s Office: Scores of Arab security prisoners were forcibly thrown down onto a concrete floor, sometimes on top of each other, as guards passed between them for long minutes, beating them with batons and kicking them randomly, without any resistance from their victims (as Josh Breiner reported Thursday).

The unrestrained violence is believed to have been carried out in revenge for the stabbing of a guard shortly beforehand near the wing. The guards’ act of revenge, which left 15 prisoners injured, was described by the Prison Service as “gaining control over a riot.” But the evidence clearly shows there was no riot, just the abuse of prisoners. The evidence was an open secret in the Prison Service: Top officials had viewed the video and knew exactly what occurred but acted as if nothing happened. The Prison Service knew that Ketziot’s officers turned a blind eye while at least 10 guards brutally beat the bound prisoners.

It wasn’t only the Prison Service that looked the other way. In the Israel Police, Lahav 433’s National Prison Investigation Unit did as little as possible to probe the affair: Only one guard was questioned and even though he admitted that he had engaged in gratuitous violence, it wasn’t enough for the police or prosecutors to proceed with an indictment. This was a negligent investigation – with no real effort to identify the guards and no police lineup – which proves that even when such an unusual case of abuse has been fully documented, the police still prefer to sweep it under the rug.

It’s hard to believe that the investigation would have ended this way if the prisoners had been Jews. But in this case, the victims were Palestinian terrorists and security prisoners belonging to Hamas. Therefore, not only was the case closed on the grounds that “the offender is not known,” but the warden on duty at the time, General Avichai Ben-Hamo, was promoted to the rank of major general. The other guards allegedly involved in the incident remain at their jobs.

Now, when the evidence has been revealed to the public, the affair can no longer remain behind prison walls. The state prosecutor must immediately order a thorough investigation that includes all the guards alleged to have been involved, and bring indictments. Any other outcome will only prove that from the state’s viewpoint, security prisoners don’t deserve to be treated like human beings.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

END OF THE ARTICLE

[8]
”It wasn’t only the Prison Service that looked the other way. In the Israel Police, Lahav 433’s National Prison Investigation Unit did as little as possible to probe the affair: Only one guard was questioned and even though he admitted that he had engaged in gratuitous violence, it wasn’t enough for the police or prosecutors to proceed with an indictment. This was a negligent investigation – with no real effort to identify the guards and no police lineup – which proves that even when such an unusual case of abuse has been fully documented, the police still prefer to sweep it under the rug.”

HAARETZA CHRONICLE OF PRISON BRUTALITY IN ISRAEL
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/a-chronicle-of-prison-brutality-of-israel-1.9894625

SEE FOR FULL TEXT, NOTE 7
[9]

”It’s hard to believe that the investigation would have ended this way if the prisoners had been Jews. But in this case, the victims were Palestinian terrorists and security prisoners belonging to Hamas. Therefore, not only was the case closed on the grounds that “the offender is not known,” but the warden on duty at the time, General Avichai Ben-Hamo, was promoted to the rank of major general. The other guards allegedly involved in the incident remain at their jobs.”

HAARETZA CHRONICLE OF PRISON BRUTALITY IN ISRAEL
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/a-chronicle-of-prison-brutality-of-israel-1.9894625

SEE FOR FULL TEXT, NOTE 7

[10]

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES 2020

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

ISRAEL AND OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES 2020

Israel continued to impose institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians living under its rule in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). It displaced hundreds of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as a result of home demolitions and imposition of other coercive measures. Israeli forces continued to use excessive force during law enforcement activities in Israel and the OPT. Israeli forces killed 31 Palestinians, including nine children, in the OPT; many were unlawfully killed while posing no imminent threat to life. Israel maintained its illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip, subjecting its residents to collective punishment and deepening the humanitarian crisis there. It also continued to restrict freedom of movement of Palestinians in the OPT through checkpoints and roadblocks. The Israeli authorities arbitrarily detained in Israel thousands of Palestinians from the OPT, holding hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, were committed with impunity. The authorities used a range of measures to target human rights defenders, journalists and others who criticized Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights. Violence against women persisted, especially against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The authorities denied asylum-seekers access to a fair or prompt refugee status determination process. Conscientious objectors to military service were imprisoned.

Background

Israel held parliamentary elections in March, the third in just over a year. In May, the two largest parties in the Knesset, Likud and the Blue and White alliance, reached a power-sharing agreement that included an announcement that Israel would further annex territories in the occupied West Bank starting in July 2020. This followed US President Donald Trump’s announcement of his “deal of the century”, which included a formal extension of Israel’s sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the vast majority of the illegal settlements in the rest of the occupied West Bank in exchange for land currently inside Israel. Israel postponed the annexation plans following diplomatic deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September. The parliament was again dissolved in December, triggering another round of elections in three months’ time.

Israel imposed lockdown measures in March and in September to contain the spread of COVID-19, triggering waves of protests calling on the Prime Minister to step down. The measures allowed the Israel Security Agency (ISA) to use surveillance capabilities usually reserved for Palestinians to trace COVID-19 infections. The Prime Minister’s trial on corruption charges began in May.

In February, the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad fired around 80 rockets and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, causing minor injuries to over 20 people, after Israeli forces killed an Islamic Jihad operative. The Israeli army carried out multiple airstrikes in Gaza, injuring 12 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

In August and September, Israel launched artillery and airstrikes against Gaza in retaliation for incendiary balloons and kites launched from Gaza into Israel. Palestinian armed groups launched indiscriminate rockets into Israel in response.

In August, Israel launched airstrikes against Hizbullah targets in Lebanon after it said that shots were fired from Lebanon into Israel. Israel also launched airstrikes against Iranian and Hizbullah targets in Syria.

In July, a district court rejected a case to force the Ministry of Defense to revoke the export licence of spyware company NSO Group, dealing a blow to victims of unlawful and targeted international surveillance.

Forcible transfers, forced evictions and demolitions

Israel demolished 848 Palestinian residential and livelihood structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 996 people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Israeli authorities said many of the demolished buildings lacked Israeli-issued permits, which are virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain, or were in closed military zones. The law of occupation prohibits such destruction unless necessary for military operations.

In other cases, Israel confiscated residential and livelihood structures, including some that were donated for humanitarian purposes. Israeli forces also punitively demolished at least six Palestinian homes, leaving 22 people, including seven children, homeless, according to B’Tselem. Punitive demolitions constitute collective punishment and are prohibited under international law.

On 5 March, Israeli forces demolished the homes of Walid Hanatsheh, in Ramallah, and Yazan Mughamis, in Birzeit, displacing six Palestinians, after an Israeli court rejected a petition by the families against the punitive demolition. On 11 March, Israeli forces punitively demolished the home of Qassam Barghouti in Kobar village near Ramallah. The three men are in prison in Israel for alleged involvement in an attack in August 2019 that killed an Israeli civilian and injured two others outside Ramallah city in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli settler organizations initiated, with the support of the Israeli authorities, forcible evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

OCHA estimated in December that around 200 Palestinian households in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had eviction cases pending against them, placing 800 adults and children at risk of displacement.

Israeli authorities demolished at least 29 residential and livelihood structures that belonged to Bedouin citizens living in “unrecognized” villages in the Negev/Naqab, according to the Negev Coexistence Forum, an Israeli NGO.

Discrimination

Israel continued to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in areas of planning, budget allocation, policing and political participation. According to the Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Israel maintains over 65 laws that discriminate against Palestinians.

Local Palestinian councils in Israel went on strike to protest against discrimination in the distribution of the state budget for local councils. The vast majority of Palestinians in Israel, comprising over 20% of the total population, live in around 139 towns and villages. They received only 1.7% of the state budget for local councils.

In August, Adalah and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of 10 local Palestinian councils and dozens of Palestinian citizens of Israel against government policy discriminating against these communities in the distribution of housing, construction and land development benefits compared to neighbouring Jewish communities that enjoy higher socio-economic status and have access to such benefits.

Israel continued to deny Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza married to Palestinian citizens of Israel the right to nationality by enforcing the discriminatory Entry to Israel Law.

In December, the magistrate court in Krayot, near Haifa, rejected a petition for access to education by Palestinian citizens of Israel living in Karmiel, citing the discriminatory Nation State Law. The decision said that establishing an Arabic school in the town or funding transport for its Palestinian residents to study in Arabic schools in nearby communities would undermine the town’s “Jewish character”.

In December, the Israeli Health Ministry began the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines that excluded the nearly 5 million Palestinians who live under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Unlawful killings and excessive use of force

Israeli military and police used unnecessary and excessive force during law enforcement activities, including search and arrest operations, and when policing demonstrations.

Military and security forces killed at least 31 Palestinians, including nine children, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, according to OCHA. Many were unlawfully killed by live ammunition or other excessive force when posing no imminent threat to life. Some of the unlawful killings appeared to be wilful, which would constitute war crimes.

Israeli forces frequently used excessive force against protesters in Kufr Qadum who continued weekly protests against settlements and settlement expansion. According to OCHA, 214 protesters and bystanders were injured during the year.

On 15 February, Israeli forces shot and injured in the eye nine-year-old Malek Issa while he was returning home from school in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya. No clashes were recorded at the time, according to OCHA. Israeli forces were maintaining a violent and intense police operation in Issawiya as a form of collective punishment.

Israeli forces frequently opened fire on fishermen and farmers in Gaza. According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, 12 fishermen and five farmers were injured.

Freedom of movement

For the 13th consecutive year, Israel continued its illegal air, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the area, which continued to have a devastating impact on the human rights of Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants. Israel stopped the entry of construction materials and fuel into Gaza repeatedly. This shut down the only power plant in Gaza, leading to a further reduction in the supply of electricity, which had already been available for only about four hours a day. Israel also imposed a full maritime closure and repeatedly limited entry of goods to food and medicine only. The measures amounted to collective punishment at a time of increasing COVID-19 infections in Gaza.

On 2 February, following an exchange of attacks between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, Israel cancelled the permits of 500 traders from Gaza that enable their holders to travel to Israel and the West Bank for business. The permits were reactivated on 18 February.

On 18 June, Omar Yaghi, a baby with a cardiac condition, died in Gaza after Israel denied the family a permit to enter Israel for a scheduled operation on 24 May at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan city.

In the West Bank, at least 593 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks continued to heavily restrict the movement of Palestinians and access to rights, including health, education and work. Holders of Palestinian identification cards faced an ongoing bar on using roads built for Israeli settlers.

Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement continued to impede Palestinians’ access to health care, posing further threats to vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lack of access to hospitals and specialized clinics during the pandemic particularly affected Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Kufr Aqab and Shu’fat Refugee Camp, which are segregated from the rest of the city by military structures, including checkpoints, and the fence/wall.

Arbitrary detention

Israeli authorities conducted hundreds of raids throughout the West Bank to arrest Palestinians, usually at their homes at night. Those arrested were detained in prisons in Israel, along with thousands of other Palestinians from the OPT arrested in previous years. This violated international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of detainees into the territory of the occupying power.

Israeli authorities used renewable administrative detention orders to hold Palestinians without charge or trial. Some 4,300 Palestinians from the OPT, including 397 administrative detainees, were held in Israeli prisons as of December, according to the Israel Prison Service. Many families of Palestinian detainees in Israel, particularly those living in Gaza, were not permitted entry to Israel to visit their relatives.

On 16 July, Israeli forces arrested Iyad Barghouti, an astrophysicist and professor at Jerusalem’s Al-Quds University, at a checkpoint near Jerusalem and placed him in administrative detention. He had previously been administratively detained in 2014 and 2016.

Israel held 157 Palestinian children in prison, including two in administrative detention, as of October. Defense for Children International Palestine said that children were interrogated without their parents present and placed with adults in prison. Under international law, detention of children should be a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate time.

Unfair trials

Palestinian civilians, including children, from the OPT were prosecuted in military courts that did not meet international fair trial standards.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Israeli soldiers, police and ISA officers continued to torture and otherwise ill-treat Palestinian detainees, including children, with impunity. Reported methods included beating, slapping, painful shackling, sleep deprivation, use of stress positions and threats of violence against family members. Prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes lasting months, was commonly used as a punishment.

Israeli forces occasionally denied medical help for Palestinians injured during law enforcement activities.

Freedoms of expression and association

The authorities used a range of measures, including raids, incitement campaigns, movement restrictions and judicial harassment, to target human rights defenders who criticized Israel’s continuing military occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories.

Israel continued to deny human rights bodies entry to the OPT, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the OPT.

On 30 July, Israeli forces arrested Mahmoud Nawajaa, a human rights defender and co-ordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in the occupied West Bank, from his home in Ramallah. A prisoner of conscience, he was released without charge on 17 August.

On 13 November, the Jerusalem District Court rejected a petition by Amnesty International against the arbitrary and punitive travel ban imposed on its employee, human rights defender Laith Abu Zeyad. For undisclosed reasons, Israeli security forces continued to bar him from entering occupied East Jerusalem and from travelling abroad through Jordan.

Rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants

Israel continued to deny asylum-seekers access to a fair and prompt refugee status determination process, leaving many without access to basic services. About 31,000 asylum-seekers were living in Israel.

Gender-based violence

Violence against women persisted in Israel, especially against Palestinian citizens.

At least 21 women were killed as a result of gender-based violence.

Conscientious objectors

At least four Israeli conscientious objectors to military service were imprisoned. Hillel Rabin spent 56 days in military prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli army citing oppressive policies against Palestinians.

END OF THE ARTICLE

[11]
Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment
http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/g3bpppdi.htm
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/h2catoc.htm



[12]

BTSELEMTORTURE AND ABUSE IN INTERROGATIONhttps://www.btselem.org/topic/torture

In interrogating Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories, the Israel Security Agency (ISA, also known by the Hebrew acronyms Shin Bet or Shabak) routinely used methods that constituted ill-treatment and even torture until the late 1990s. In doing so, the ISA relied on the 1987 recommendations of a state commission headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau. The commission had held that, in order to “prevent terrorism”, ISA interrogators were permitted to use “psychological pressure” and a “moderate degree of physical pressure”. This permission was grounded, in the commission’s opinion, in the “necessity defense” laid out in Israeli Penal Law. In practice, the interrogation methods used by the ISA during that time went far beyond a reasonable interpretation of the term “moderate physical pressure”.This state of affairs persisted for years, despite the right not to be subjected to ill-treatment or torture – whether physical or psychological – being one of the few human rights that are considered absolute. As an absolute right, it may never be balanced against other rights and values and cannot be suspended or limited, even in difficult circumstances.In September 1999, following a series of petitions filed by human rights organizations and by Palestinians interrogated by the ISA, Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ) ruled that Israeli law does not empower ISA interrogators to use physical means in interrogation. The justices ruled that the specific methods discussed in the petitions – including painful binding, shaking, placing a sack on a person’s head for prolonged periods of time and sleep deprivation – were unlawful. However, they also held that ISA agents who exceed their authority and use “physical pressure” may not necessarily bear criminal responsibility for their actions, if they are later found to have used these methods in a “ticking bomb” case, based on the “necessity defense”. Following this ruling, reports of torture and ill-treatment in ISA interrogations did drop. However, ISA agents continued to use interrogation methods that constitute abuse and even torture, relying on the court’s recognition of the “ticking bomb” exception. These methods were not limited to exceptional cases and quickly became standard interrogation policy.Several joint research reports published by B’Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, based on hundreds of affidavits and testimonials given by Palestinians who underwent ISA interrogations after the HCJ ruling, indicate that the ISA still routinely employs psychological and physical abuse in interrogations. While interrogators steer clear of the specific methods that the court disqualified, the rationale is the same: using isolation from the outside world and harsh incarceration conditions, in addition to the interrogation itself, to psychologically pressure and physically weaken the individual. This combined use of holding conditions and interrogation methods constitutes abuse and inhuman, degrading treatment, at times even amounting to torture. It is regularly employed against Palestinians in ISA interrogations, in blatant violation of international law and basic moral standards.According to the accounts of Palestinians who have undergone ISA interrogation, they are held in inhuman conditions, including narrow, windowless cells that are sometimes moldy and foul-smelling and are constantly lit with artificial lighting that is painful to the eyes. Some detainees reported being held in solitary confinement, completely cut off from their surroundings. Some reported exposure to extremes of heat and cold, as well as sleep deprivation. Many described abominable hygienic conditions; among other things, they stated that the prison authorities do not allow them to shower, change clothes, brush their teeth or even use toilet paper. The food is intentionally poor in quality and quantity, and detainees lose weight while in custody. In the interrogation room, they are forced to sit bound to a chair, without moving, for hours and even days on end. Interrogators threaten the detainees, including threats to harm their relatives, as well as shouting and employing violence against them.Most Palestinians who are physically or mental abused in interrogation have no way to complain until the interrogation is over. This is because Palestinian detainees are regularly denied the right to meet with counsel, and HCJ petitions against the denial of this right have been repeatedly dismissed. Also, they usually cannot use the opportunity of coming before a judge in a remand hearing to air their grievances: Most hearings are extremely cursory and, in some of them, detainees are not represented or are denied the opportunity to confer with the lawyer representing them. Most detainees are not aware of the fact that they may approach the judge on their own initiative. In any case, they shy away from sharing what they are undergoing with the judge for fear of reprisal back in the interrogation room. Even when detainees do come forward, the authorities take no action, as years of monitoring by human rights organizations reveal. Since 2001, not a single criminal investigation has been launched into a complaint against an ISA interrogator, despite hundreds of complaints being lodged with the relevant authorities. Although formal changes have been made to the apparatus charged with looking into these complaints – including the appointment of an Inspector of Complaints by ISA Interrogees inside the ISA, and the subsequent transfer of the position to the Ministry of Justice – they have done nothing to alter the situation: Hundreds of complaints, zero criminal investigations.This system of interrogation, which relies on a combination of holding conditions and interrogator conduct, was shaped by state authorities. It is not the personal initiative of any particular interrogator or prison guard, and the actions described here are not anomalies to be weeded out by the justice system. The cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees is inherent to the ISA’s violent interrogation policy. This policy is dictated from above, and not set by interrogators in the field.While the ISA runs the system, a broad network of partners collaborates to facilitate it. The Israel Prison Service (IPS) adapts prison conditions to match the interrogation plan designed to break the detainee’s spirit. Medical and mental health personnel greenlight the interrogation of Palestinians who arrive at the facility – including in cases of poor health – and even hand detainees back to the interrogators after caring for physical and mental injuries they sustained in interrogation, knowing full well that they would be subjected to measures of abuse and torture; soldiers and police officers abuse detainees while transporting them to the ISA, with their commanders turning a blind eye and the MAG Corps and State Attorney’s Office not bringing them to justice or holding them fully accountable. Military judges almost automatically sign off on motions for remand in custody and effectively sanction the continued abuse and inhuman conditions. The State Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General have thus far provided ISA interrogators with full immunity. Finally, HCJ judges regularly reject petitions seeking to overturn the denial of detainee’s rights to meet with legal counsel, clearing the way for continued abuse.All these are party, in one form or another, to the cruel, inhuman, degrading and abusive treatment to which Palestinians are subjected in ISA interrogations. By enabling the existence of this abusive interrogation regime, they all bear responsibility for the severe violations of interrogatees’ human rights and for the mental and physical harm inflicted on these individuals
END OF THE ARTICLE
[13]
Article 2 Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.EURO MEDITERRANEAN AGREEMENT establishing an association between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the State of Israel, of the other part 
https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/israel/documents/eu_israel/asso_agree_en.pdf


[14]
Article 90 Promotion of the international legal order
The Government shall promote the development of the international legal order.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDSChapter 5 Legislation and administration

http://dutchcivillaw.com/legislation/constitution055.htm

SEE FOR THE WHOLE CONSTITUTION OF THE NETHERLANDS
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
https://www.government.nl/documents/regulations/2012/10/18/the-constitution-of-the-kingdom-of-the-netherlands-2008

OR

file:///C:/Users/Essed/Downloads/the-constitution-of-the-kingdom-of-the-netherlands-2008%20(2).pdf


END OF THE NOTES

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor A Chronicle of Israeli prison brutality in Ketzion prison/Letter to the members of the Dutch parliament

Opgeslagen onder Divers

Letter to CAF about their continuing involvement in the illegal Israeli settlements

LETTER TO CAF ABOUT THEIR CONTINUING INVOLVEMENT INTHE ILLEGAL ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS

  • A metro stop
  • CAFCreating rail solutions tailored to suit the needs of each and every customer.Front view of a high-speed train

CAF TRANSPORTSYSTEM, EARNING BLOOD MONEY BY SUPPORTING THEILLEGAL ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS

Image result for settlements/Images

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS, ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

https://www.caf.net/en/compania/index.phphttps://bdsmovement.net/boycott-cafhttps://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS, ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

TOCAF 
Director and ManagementSubject: Your continuing involvement with the illegal Israeli settlements

Dear Director,Dear Management,

As you’ll probably know:This is not the first time I wrote to you to give you hell about your despicablerole concerning the illegal Israeli settlements:See below, under notes!And since you obviously felt any shame and are still involved in thosecriminal practices of your company, serving Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. [1], I’ll target you again and I’m sure that I am NOTthe only one!Must I-again- remind you of the fact, that, as I stated above, the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory [you serve the settlements inoccupied East Jerusalem!] are illegal according International Law? [2]Therefore, by serving those illegal settlements, you are not only complicit in stealing occupied Palestinian land, worse still:You are serving and maintaining the illegal Israeli occupation, thus defending and maintaining a criminal regime of opression and apartheid! [3]And by maintaining a regime of apartheid, you are complicit incrimes against humanity. [4]All the water in the world can’t wash the blood on your hands [5] by doing thus!
ISRAELI TERROR IN EASTERN JERUSALEM’
Of course you are aware of the Israeli terror in Eastern Jerusalem:The house evictions of Palestinians in favour of the illegal settlementsyou facilitate , the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque  the excessive policeviolence against the Palestinian population [6]Especially neigbourhood Sheikh Jarrah is victim of Israeli etniccleansing operations and The Jerusalem Light Rail, hosted andfacilitated by your company, passes through Sheikh Jarrah, facilitating thug settlers and the Israeli occupation! [7]Have you no shame.Is your money deserving obsession that big, that you are willing to be complicit in warcrimes and crimes against humanity?For make no mistake:The crimes that Israel commits in occupied Gaza [8] are also yourco responsibility, since you facilitate the Israeli occupationregime!
CONCLUSION
I have said and written enoughAnd what says more:I’ve written the things you already knew, but ignored.So Directors and Management of CAF, again:You are complicit in warcrimes and crimes against humanity,as long as you facilitate the illegal settlements and the Israelioccupation regime of apartheid!So STOP IT!
Withdraw your interests in the occupied territories as quick as the Light!Stop your criminal Work
AND:I call on your shareholders [see cc] to stop you and pressure you todo the only right thing:
To wash the blood of your hands and don’t support the Dark Powers that Be, which is this Regime of Occupation and Apartheid
DIXI [Latin for: I have spoken] [9]
Kind greetings
Astrid EssedAmsterdam 
NOTES
SEE ALSO THE LINK TO THE NOTES
https://www.astridessed.nl/notes-t-1-m-9-at-letter-to-caf-about-involvement-in-the-illegal-israeli-settlements/

OR

https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/community/notes-t-t-m-9-at-letter-to-caf-at-involvement-in-the-illegal-israeli-settlements/

THE PHYSICAL NOTES:

[1]

INTERNATIONAL RAILWAY JOURNAL.COM

CAF AND SHAPIR AWARDED JERUSALEM LIGHTRAIL PROJECT CONTRACT

TEXT

JERUSALEM Transportation Masterplan Team (JTMT) has awarded the TransJerusalem J-Net consortium, comprised of CAF and the construction firm Shapir, a €1.8bn contract to undertake an extension to the Jerusalem light rail network.

The Private-Public Partnership (PPP) includes the construction of 27km of new track, 53 new stations and various depots covering a 6.8km extension to the Red Line, and the new 20.6km Green Line. The Red Line is currently 13.8km long with 23 stations, and carries around 145,000 passengers daily.

The consortium will also design and supply 114 new Urbos LRVs for the Green Line, and the refurbishment of the 46 vehicles currently in service on the Red Line.

The contract includes the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation.

CAF’s share of the contract is worth more than €500m, and includes the vehicle’s supply and refurbishment, signalling, energy and communication systems and project integration. CAF will also have a 50% stake in the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines, which is expected to have a €1bn turnover.

Construction is expected begin later this year with the new extensions fully operational by 2025.

Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland) also submitted bids for the contract.

END OF THE ARTICLE

]URBAN TRANSPORT MAGAZINECAF-SAPHIR CONSORTIUM WINS JERUSALEM GREEN LINELIGHT RAIL TENDER

8 AUGUST 2019

The transport authority JTMT (Jerusalem Transportation Masterplan Team) has chosen the TransJerusalem J-Net Ltd consortium, consisting in the CAF Group and the construction firm Saphir, for the Jerusalem light rail project. The project value is 1.8 billion EUR.

The so-called Green line is a PPP (Private-Public Partnership) scheme and includes the construction of 20.6 kilometres of new track, 53 stations and a depot. Jerusalem opened its’ first light rail line, the red line in 2011. The new Green line uses the current Red Line on a stretch of 6.8 km. The contract also includes the design and supply of 114 low-floor Urbos trams (which will be operated as double-tractions) for the new Green Line and the refurbishment of the 46 units which are currently in service on the existing Red Line.

114 Urbos trams and 25 years of operation

The project scope of the consortium will also include the supply of the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation. The CAF Group’s scope of this project exceeds 500 million EUR. The Group will also have a 50% stake in the company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines. The project is expected to be implemented this year with the new network fully operative by 2025.

The future network

The tram’s Red Line currently extends along 13.8 km with 23 stations distributed on the route, was inaugurated in 2011 and providing transport to over 145,000 passengers on average per day. The Green lines is expected to have a ridership of 200,000 passengers per day. It will link the two campuses of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continue south via Pat junction to Gilo while using a common section with the Red line in the city centre until the terminus of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem railway station which was inaugurated in 2018.

Of the eight entities that participated in the preliminary stages, only two consortiums submitted bids in the final stage. The other consortium consisted in the companies Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland). Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier are reported to have left the tender process at an earlier stage. The companies did not officially withdraw from the process due to political reasons. Nevertheless, the light rail development in Jerusalem has been criticized in the past as both lines run through the disputed area of East Jerusalem.

END OF THE ARTICLE

CAF

GET OFF ISRAEL APARTHEIDTRAIN

https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf

WHY?

Israel is only able to maintain its regime of occupation, colonisation and apartheid over the Palestinian people because of international complicity. Corporations play a key role in this.

The Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) project is so blatantly illegal that other multinationals which had participated in the initial stages of bidding for the project, including Alstom, Siemens, Systra, Bombardier and Macquarie withdrew from the call for tenders, leaving just two consortiums bidding.

The French company Veolia was forced to pull out of the same illegal Israeli JLR project in 2015 after losing billions of dollars in international tenders due to sustained BDS campaigning in Europe, the US and several Arab countries.

The Israeli business publication Globes claimed, expectedly, that the other firms did not “officially withdraw from the process for political reasons” but admitted that “for most of the international transportation and infrastructure companies, Jerusalem is ‘outside the pale.’

By carrying out this project, CAF is also violating its own code of conduct, where it says that “any action by CAF and its members will keep scrupulous respect for laws, human rights and public liberties.” The Basque Autonomous Community government owns shares of CAF, which should ensure that no public money supports Israel’s illegal occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Corporate involvement in the crimes of Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid is not only morally reprehensible and a legal liability. It can hurt business, too.

MILESTONES

2020

October:

In the Spanish state over 100 people have asked the public train company RENFE not to contract CAF, due to its involvement in the illegal Israeli Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), in partnership with the Israeli company Shapir that is in the UN database of companies that enable and profit from Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. 

Eighteen human rights groups have asked the Spanish Minister of transport José Luis Abalos to exclude from public tenders CAF and all companies listed in the UN database, such as Alstom. Over thirty organisations in solidarity with Palestine sent a letter to Reyes Maroto the Spanish  Minister of Industry and the publicly owned company RENFE. This letter was sent because the Minister had offered more public contracts to CAF in light of the company’s announcement of its plans to shut down one of its factories, Trenasa, causing 118 people to lose their jobs. This decision is incomprehensible seeing that the company ended 2019 with its highest record of earnings and its best record in sales. This and the fact that CAF is involved in an illegal Israeli project that serves settlements, which will expose the company to boycott campaigns globally, are clear evidence that CAF cares very little about its workers’ rights and about human rights in general. 

In Oslo, Norway,  the Palestine Committee and two railway unions received new trams from the Basque firm CAF with a protest. They’re asking Norway’s public sector not to work with CAF until it stops building Israel’s illegal Jerusalem Light Rail, entrenching apartheid.

Eight trade unions in Norway have joined the call to boycott CAF: Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees (National), Norwegian Union of Railway workers (National), National Union of Norwegian Locomotivemen (National),  Fagforbundet- Helse, Sosial og Velferd, Oslo (Local), Norwegian Civil Service Union at OsloMet (Local), Lokomotivpersonalets forening Oslo (Local), Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions, local 850 (Local),  and Oslo Sporveiers Arbeiderforening (Local).

CAF and Shapir are close to signing one of the largest project financing agreements ever agreed in Israel for the construction and operation of a network of lines in the illegal Jerusalem Light Rail project. The financing will be extended by a consortium of banks led by Bank Hapoalim, which like Shapir is included in the UN database of companies profiting from business in Israel’s illegal settlements. 

END OF THE ARTICLE

” The Jerusalem light rail connects large Israeli settlement blocs in occupied East Jerusalem with the western part of the city, expropriating occupied Palestinian land and promoting increased territorial contiguity for settlements alongside growing territorial fragmentation for East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods.”

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WHO PROFITS.ORGFLASH REPORTTRACKING ANNEXATION:THE JERUSALEM LIGHT RAIL AND THE ISRAELIOCCUPATION

JUL 2017

https://whoprofits.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/old/tracking_annexation_-_the_jerusalem_light_rail_and_the_israeli_occupation.pdf

”Development of the light rail line is bringing prosperity and growth to the city’s real estate and business sectors, an upsurge in cultural and entertainment centers, and accessibility to the downtown area for residents of large neighborhoods, such as Pigat Ze’ev.”

CITYPASS

JERUSALEM LIGHTRAIL

ABOUT

JERUSALEM AND THE LIGHT RAIL

https://web.archive.org/web/20130925233415/http://www.citypass.co.il/english/ContentPage.aspx?ID=16

ORIGINELE BRON

CITYPASS

JERUSALEM LIGHTRAIL

https://web.archive.org/web/20130925233325/http://www.citypass.co.il/english/default.aspx

Pisgat Ze’ev (Hebrew: פסגת זאב‎, lit. Ze’ev’s Peak) is an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem[1] and the largest residential neighborhood in Jerusalem with a population of over 50,000.[2] Pisgat Ze’ev was established by Israel as one of the city’s five Ring Neighborhoods on land effectively annexed after the 1967 Six-Day War.”

WIKIPEDIA

PISGAT ZE’EV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisgat_Ze%27ev

[2]

ILLEGALITY OF THE SETTLEMENTS

”Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”. 

The extensive appropriation of land and the appropriation and destruction of property required to build and expand settlements also breach other rules of international humanitarian law. Under the Hague Regulations of 1907, the public property of the occupied population (such as lands, forests and agricultural estates) is subject to the laws of usufruct. This means that an occupying state is only allowed a very limited use of this property. This limitation is derived from the notion that occupation is temporary, the core idea of the law of occupation. In the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the occupying power “has a duty to ensure the protection, security, and welfare of the people living under occupation and to guarantee that they can live as normal a life as possible, in accordance with their own laws, culture, and traditions.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

CHAPTER 3: ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL

LAW

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/

ARTICLE 49. 4TH GENEVA CONVENTION

ARTICLE 49 [ Link ]

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. 

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/1a13044f3bbb5b8ec12563fb0066f226/523ba38706c71588c12563cd0042c407

THE HAGUE CONVENTION

ARTICLE 55

”Art. 55. The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/0/1d1726425f6955aec125641e0038bfd6

[3]

[QUESTION] 6 
HOW CAN YOU ACCUSE ISRAEL OF APARTHEID WHEN ISRAELIVOTE IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS, HAVE PASSPORTS, MOVE FREELY,AND SERVE IN THE KNESSET?
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHQ & A: A TRESHOLD CROSSEDISRAELI AUTHORITIES AND THE CRIME OF APARTHEIDAND PERSECUTION

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/qa-threshold-crossed#How_can_you

ORIGINELE BRON

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHQ & A: A TRESHOLD CROSSEDISRAELI AUTHORITIES AND THE CRIME OF APARTHEIDAND PERSECUTION

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/qa-threshold-crossed

”We found the three elements of the crime of apartheid all come together in the OPT, pursuant to a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In the OPT, that intent has been coupled with systematic oppression and inhumane acts committed against Palestinians living there.”

[QUESTION] 7ARE YOU SAYING THAT THERE IS APARTHEIDWITHIN THE GREEN LINE , THE INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED BORDERS OFTHE STATE OF ISRAEL?OR ONLY IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA?
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHQ & A: A TRESHOLD CROSSEDISRAELI AUTHORITIES AND THE CRIME OF APARTHEIDAND PERSECUTION

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/qa-threshold-crossed#Are_you_saying

”The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHABUSIVE ISRAELI POLICIES CONSTITUTE CRIMES OFAPARTHEID, PERSECUTIONCRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY SHOULD TRIGGER ACTION TO END REPRESSION AGAINST PALESTINIANS

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/abusive-israeli-policies-constitute-crimes-apartheid-persecution

(Jerusalem) – Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The finding is based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem.

The 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.April 27, 2021

Q&A: A Threshold Crossed

Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution


“Prominent voices have warned for years that apartheid lurks just around the corner if the trajectory of Israel’s rule over Palestinians does not change,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This detailed study shows that Israeli authorities have already turned that corner and today are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The finding of apartheid and persecution does not change the legal status of the occupied territory, made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, or the factual reality of occupation.

Originally coined in relation to South Africa, apartheid today is a universal legal term. The prohibition against particularly severe institutional discrimination and oppression or apartheid constitutes a core principle of international law. The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements:

  1. An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
  2. A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.
  3. Inhumane acts.

The reference to a racial group is understood today to address not only treatment on the basis of genetic traits but also treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin, as defined in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Human Rights Watch applies this broader understanding of race.

The crime against humanity of persecution, as defined under the Rome Statute and customary international law, consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or other group with discriminatory intent.

Human Rights Watch found that the elements of the crimes come together in the occupied territory, as part of a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there.

Drawing on years of human rights documentation, case studies, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and other sources, Human Rights Watch compared policies and practices toward Palestinians in the occupied territory and Israel with those concerning Jewish Israelis living in the same areas. Human Rights Watch wrote to the Israeli government in July 2020, soliciting its perspectives on these issues, but has received no response.

Across Israel and the occupied territory, Israeli authorities have sought to maximize the land available for Jewish communities and to concentrate most Palestinians in dense population centers. The authorities have adopted policies to mitigate what they have openly described as a “demographic threat” from Palestinians. In Jerusalem, for example, the government’s plan for the municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain.

To maintain domination, Israeli authorities systematically discriminate against Palestinians. The institutional discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel face includes laws that allow hundreds of small Jewish towns to effectively exclude Palestinians and budgets that allocate only a fraction of resources to Palestinian schools as compared to those that serve Jewish Israeli children. In the occupied territory, the severity of the repression, including the imposition of draconian military rule on Palestinians while affording Jewish Israelis living in a segregated manner in the same territory their full rights under Israel’s rights-respecting civil law, amounts to the systematic oppression required for apartheid.

Israeli authorities have committed a range of abuses against Palestinians. Many of those in the occupied territory constitute severe abuses of fundamental rights and the inhumane acts again required for apartheid, including: sweeping movement restrictions in the form of the Gaza closure and a permit regime, confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank, harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that led to the forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives, and the suspension of basic civil rights to millions of Palestinians.

Many of the abuses at the core of the commission of these crimes, such as near-categorical denial of building permits to Palestinians and demolition of thousands of homes on the pretext of lacking permits, have no security justification. Others, such as Israel’s effective freeze on the population registry it manages in the occupied territory, which all but blocks family reunification for Palestinians living there and bars Gaza residents from living in the West Bank, use security as a pretext to further demographic goals. Even when security forms part of the motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would excessive force or torture, Human Rights Watch said.

“Denying millions of Palestinians their fundamental rights, without any legitimate security justification and solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish, is not simply a matter of an abusive occupation,” Roth said. “These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another.”

Statements and actions by Israeli authorities in recent years, including the passage of a law with constitutional status in 2018 establishing Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” the growing body of laws that further privilege Israeli settlers in the West Bank and do not apply to Palestinians living in the same territory, as well as the massive expansion in recent years of settlements and accompanying infrastructure connecting settlements to Israel, have clarified their intent to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis. The possibility that a future Israeli leader might someday forge a deal with Palestinians that dismantles the discriminatory system does not negate that reality today.

Israeli authorities should dismantle all forms of repression and discrimination that privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians, including with regards to freedom of movement, allocation of land and resources, access to water, electricity, and other services, and the granting of building permits.

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor should investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated in the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. Countries should do so as well in accordance with their national laws under the principle of universal jurisdiction, and impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on officials responsible for committing these crimes.

The findings of crimes against humanity should prompt the international community to reevaluate the nature of its engagement in Israel and Palestine and adopt an approach centered on human rights and accountability rather than solely on the stalled “peace process.” Countries should establish a UN commission of inquiry to investigate systematic discrimination and repression in Israel and Palestine and a UN global envoy for the crimes of persecution and apartheid with a mandate to mobilize international action to end persecution and apartheid worldwide.

Countries should condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps toward ending their commission of these crimes. Countries should vet agreements, cooperation schemes, and all forms of trade and dealing with Israel to screen for those directly contributing to committing the crimes, mitigate the human rights impacts and, where not possible, end activities and funding found to facilitate these serious crimes.

“While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” Roth said. “Those who strive for Israeli-Palestinian peace, whether a one or two-state solution or a confederation, should in the meantime recognize this reality for what it is and bring to bear the sorts of human rights tools needed to end it.”

”Israel has maintained military rule over some portion of the Palestinian population for all but six months of its 73-year history. It did so over the vast majority of Palestinians inside Israel from 1948 and until 1966. From 1967 until the present, it has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law.”

REPORT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH:
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHA TRESHOLD CROSSEDISRAELI AUTHORITIES AND THE CRIME OF APARTHEID AND PERSECUTION

27 APRIL 2021

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

[4]

  Article 7 Crimes against humanity 

1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: 

(a) Murder;

 (b) Extermination;

 (c) Enslavement; 

(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population; 

(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; 

(f) Torture;

 (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; 

(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

 (i) Enforced disappearance of persons;

 (j) The crime of apartheid;

….

…. 

ROME STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/Documents/RS-Eng.pdf

[5]

LADY MACBETH

Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh! MAC BETH ACT V, SCENE I http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html

[6]
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHJERUSALEM TO GAZA: ISRAELI AUTHORITIES REASSERTDOMINATION
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/11/jerusalem-gaza-israeli-authorities-reassert-domination

Forcible takeovers of homes, brutal suppression of demonstrators, places of worship under assault, identity-based communal violence, indiscriminate rocket attacks, children killed in strikes: what to make of the dizzying headlines out of Israel and Palestine in recent days?

Without doubt, the recent events in Gaza and Jerusalem have given rise to grave abuses. We are investigating and will take some time as we gather the facts. There are, though, some preliminary takeaways based on what we do know. 

The escalation began over the move to take over several Palestinian homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed but is occupied territory under international law. Israel planned to evict the Palestinian residents and transfer their longtime homes to Jewish settlers. Israeli courts allowed these moves under a 1970 Israeli law that facilitates the return of property to Jewish owners or their heirs, including Jewish associations acting on their behalf, that they claim to have owned in East Jerusalem prior to 1948, when Jordanian authorities assumed control until 1967.

The Palestinian families involved had earlier been displaced from inside what is today Israel. They are barred by law from reclaiming their land and homes, which the Israeli authorities confiscated, along with land belonging to many other displaced Palestinians, as “absentee property” in the aftermath of the events around the establishment of the state of Israel between 1947 and 1949. A final court ruling on the matter is expected soon.

This discriminatory treatment, with the exact opposite legal outcomes for claims of pre-1948 title to property based on whether the claimant is a Jewish Israeli or a Palestinian, underscores the reality of apartheid that Palestinians in East Jerusalem face. Nearly all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem hold a conditional, revocable residency status, while Jewish Israelis in the same area are citizens with secure status. Palestinians live in densely populated enclaves that receive a fraction of the resources given to settlements and effectively cannot obtain building permits, while neighboring Israeli settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land flourish.

Israeli officials have intentionally created this discriminatory system under which Jewish Israelis thrive at the expense of Palestinians. The government’s plan for the Jerusalem municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain. This intent to dominate underlies Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, which Human Rights Watch documented in a recent report.

To protest the planned Sheikh Jarrah evictions, Palestinians held demonstrations around East Jerusalem, some of which included incidents of rock-throwing. Israeli forces responded by firing teargas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets, including inside al-Aqsa Mosque, injuring 1000 Palestinians, 735 by rubber bullets, between May 7 and May 10, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 32 Israeli officers have also been injured, according to figures cited by OCHA.

These practices stem from a decades-long pattern of Israeli authorities using excessive and vastly disproportionate force to quell protests and disturbances by Palestinians, often resulting in serious injury and loss of life.

Protests later broke out both in the West Bank and inside Israel.

Seeking to take advantage of the opportunity to brandish their image as defenders of al-Aqsa Mosque, Hamas and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli population centers. Three people in Israel have been killed as a result, as of May 11. Such attacks, which are inherently indiscriminate and endanger the lives, homes, and properties of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, are war crimes, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented over the years.

In response, Israeli forces launched airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported on May 11 that these strikes killed 30 Palestinians, including 10 children, though there are reports that some may have been killed in errant rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups. The legality of each strike requires thorough investigations, but the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in the densely populated Gaza Strip, where more than 2 million Palestinians live in a strip of territory that is 41 kilometers long and between 6 and 12 kilometers wide, and targeting at times of residential buildings is likely to harm civilians.

During armed hostilities over the last decade plus, Human Rights Watch has documented the regular use of excessive and vastly disproportionate force by Israeli authorities, at times deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.

For years, this cycle of escalation has played on loop, at varying degrees of intensity. Even if the immediate crisis subsides, the vicious cycle will continue so long as impunity for serious abuses remains the norm and the international community fails to take the sort of measures to ensure accountability that a situation of this gravity warrants.

END OF THE ARTICLE

[7]

6. Basque company CAF is contracted to extend Israel’s Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) tram service to illegal settlements. Settlements are defined as war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The JLR passes through Sheikh Jarrah where illegal settlers backed by the Israeli state, their military, and police forces, are attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah.

Use social media to demand #CAFGetOffIsraelsApartheidTrain

EAST JERUSALEM: WHAT IS HAPPENING AND HOW YOU CAN TAKE ACTION NOW

https://bdsmovement.net/news/east-jerusalem-what-happening-and-how-you-can-take-action-now

Watching apartheid Israel’s bloody crushing of popular Palestinian protests in Sheikh Jarrah and occupied Jerusalme calls us to action. We have proven before our collective power in the form of #BDS. Here are 9 actions you can take to fight Israeli impunity and #SaveSheikhJarrah.

Over the last number of weeks Palestinian protests to #SaveSheikhJarrah, in occupied East Jerusalem, have grown in size. They have been met with brutal repression by Israeli apartheid security forces, including police officers trained in Israel’s police training academy partially owned by G4S and Allied Universal. 

Indigenous Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah have fought lengthy legal battles in Israeli courts against eviction orders which would see them ethnically cleansed, forcefully evicted from their homes, and replaced with illegal Israeli settlers.

At the beginning of May, Israeli settlers submitted their response to the rightful claims of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah to the Israeli court, an apparatus of Israel’s apartheid regime. 

The Palestinian families were then given time to reach an “agreement” with the settlers regarding the right to their homes. Sheikh Jarrah belongs to the Palestinian families. It is part of the occupied Palestinian territory, and therefore any Israeli settler presence in it amounts to a war crime under international law. Israel’s settlement enterprise is an integral part of its apartheid system against all Palestinians.

The Israeli court decision to give a period of time to “both sides” to seek a compromise and reach an agreement is colonial gaslighting. It is also a tactic used to exhaust the ongoing protests and public pressure to #SaveSheikhJarrah. More protests are scheduled to take place over the coming days, and residents vow to remain steadfast.

In Silwan, another East Jerusalem neighbourhood, extremist settlers backed by the Israeli state want to take over the homes of seven Palestinian families who are also fighting lengthy legal battles in Israeli courts.

In occupied Jerusalem, Israel keeps a 60:40 demographic ratio between Jews and Arabs. All ‘excess’ Palestinians are under threat of forced transfer.

In April, Human Rights Watch published their histories report ‘A Threshold Crossed – Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution‘ outlining Israel’s demographic plans for Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, the government’s plan for the municipality, including both the west and occupied east of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and a target demographic “ratio of 70% Jews and 30% Arabs”—later adjusted to a 60:40 ratio after authorities acknowledged that “this goal is not attainable” in light of “the demographic trend.”

Watching from afar Israel’s brutal violence against unarmed Palestinian protestors defending their homes and dignity can evoke feelings of anger mixed with powerlessness. We have proven before that collective action in the form of #BDS works best to express true and effective solidarity. Here are 9 actions you can take to fight Israeli impunity and #SaveSheikhJarrah 

TAKE ACTION

  1. First, use the power of social media to highlight what is happening. Use #SaveSheikhJarrah and #SaveSilwan in all of your social media posts. Share images and videos from activists who are facing social media censorship. Amplify the voices of the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.
     
  2. Last week Human Rights Watch stated in their groundbreaking report what Palestinians have been saying for decades. Israel is an apartheid state. Now the global consensus is building. Israel’s regime of oppression, including its actions in Sheikh Jarrah, fits the UN definition of apartheid. We can work together to dismantle Israeli apartheid, as global solidarity and boycotts helped to end South African apartheid.Support our campaign and use #UNInvestigateApartheid on social media to add your voice to the global call.
     
  3. Israeli security companies make millions of dollars in global exports every year by selling goods and services tested on Indigenous Palestinians, including those struggling against ethnic cleansing in occupied Jerusalem.  AnyVision’s facial recognition system and NSO’s spying technology are among the most obvious examples of apartheid Israel’s tools of mass surveillance and repression. Israel tries them on Palestinians and exports them to dictatorships and far-right governments worldwide to support their crimes and human rights violations.Pressure your parliament/government to impose a #MilitaryEmbargo against Israel.
     
  4. G4S and now Allied Universal own a 25% stake in Israel’s national police academy where Israeli police learn brutal & violent repression being used against residents and activists in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. Some of these militarized tactics end up being shared with U.S. and other police forces during joint training.Join our letter-writing campaign and urge Allied Universal executives to divest from Israeli apartheid.On social media use #StopG4S to demand they divest from Israeli apartheid.
  5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Hewlett Packard (HPE and HP) play key roles in Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid against the Indigenous Palestinians. They provide computer systems to the Israeli army and maintain data centres through their servers for the Israeli police who are violently repressing peaceful protestors defending their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.Sign the international pledge and use #BoycottHP on social media.
     
  6. Basque company CAF is contracted to extend Israel’s Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) tram service to illegal settlements. Settlements are defined as war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The JLR passes through Sheikh Jarrah where illegal settlers backed by the Israeli state, their military, and police forces, are attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah.Use social media to demand #CAFGetOffIsraelsApartheidTrain
     
  7. German sportswear manufacturer PUMA sponsors the Israel Football Association, which includes teams and pitches in illegal Israeli settlements, including Givat HaMivtar, just north of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. Join the campaign launched by 200 Palestinian teams to #BoycottPuma.Share social media actions hijacking PUMA’s #OnlySeeGreat campaign with Palestinians #OnlySeeApartheid.
     
  8. Boycott all products from Israel’s colonial settlements! Israeli produce like dates and avocados, many of which are produced by companies operating in settlements, can be found in local supermarkets. Demand your supermarket to stop stocking them.
     
  9. International action can help stop Israel in its tracks. Email or call the elected officials in your country and urge them to adopt Human Rights Watch findings on Israeli apartheid and, crucially, its recommendations to condition all relations with Israel on dismantling its apartheid regime.

END OF THE ARTICLE

CAF: GET OUT OF SHEIKH JARRAH!

https://bdsmovement.net/caf-get-out-of-sheikh-jarrah

This Saturday June 5 is the annual shareholder meeting of CAF, a Basque company that is building the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), a tram line serving Israel’s illegal settlements in Jerusalem.

The JLR passes through occupied Jerusalem including the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which Israel wants to ethnically cleanse.

We need your help to pressure CAF shareholders: CAF must end its complicity with Israel’s violent occupation of Jerusalem.

Four Palestinian families are facing eviction from their Jerusalem homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Over the past few weeks, Israeli settlers, with the backing of lsrael’s military and police forces, have violently attacked Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and the rest of occupied Jerusalem. 

This last wave of attacks is not new and is a core part of Israel’s systemic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem- which is illegal under international law.

Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah are resilient and defiant, and despite Israel’s brutal attacks, they will not give up their rights to their homes.

You can stand with them by pressuring CAF to abandon the project to build Israel’s colonial tramway. 

Pressure works, and there is a precedent. Two weeks ago, the Norwegian Oil Fund divested from CAF’s partner in the Jerusalem Light Rail, the Israeli company Shapir, due to its complicity in human rights violations. The Norwegian Oil Fund is also a shareholder of CAF.

On Saturday, CAF shareholders have a choice to make: take the company out of Sheikh Jarrah, and occupied Jerusalem, or face losing lucrative contracts around the world through BDS action.

END OF ARTICLE

[8]

”Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAEL: DISENGAGEMENT WILL NOT

END GAZA OCCUPATION’

https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/10/28/israel-disengagement-will-not-end-gaza-occupation

TEXT

Israeli Government Still Holds Responsibility for Welfare of Civilians

The Israeli government’s plan to remove troops and Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip would not end Israel’s occupation of the territory. As an occupying power, Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population.

Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

Under the plan, Israel is scheduled to remove settlers and military bases protecting the settlers from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank Jewish settlements by the end of 2005. The Israeli military will remain deployed on Gaza’s southern border, and will reposition its forces to other areas just outside the territory.

In addition to controlling the borders, coastline and airspace, Israel will continue to control Gaza’s telecommunications, water, electricity and sewage networks, as well as the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. Gaza will also continue to use Israeli currency.

A World Bank study on the economic effects of the plan determined that “disengagement” would ease restrictions on mobility inside Gaza. But the study also warned that the removal of troops and settlers would have little positive effect unless accompanied by an opening of Gaza’s borders. If the borders are sealed to labor and trade, the plan “would create worse hardship than is seen today.”

The plan also explicitly envisions continued home demolitions by the Israeli military to expand the “buffer zone” along the Gaza-Egypt border. According to a report released last week by Human Rights Watch, the Israeli military has illegally razed nearly 1,600 homes since 2000 to create this buffer zone, displacing some 16,000 Palestinians. Israeli officials have called for the buffer zone to be doubled, which would result in the destruction of one-third of the Rafah refugee camp.

In addition, the plan states that disengagement “will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” A report by legal experts from the Israeli Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the military made public on Sunday, however, reportedly acknowledges that disengagement “does not necessarily exempt Israel from responsibility in the evacuated territories.”

If Israel removes its troops from Gaza, the Palestinian National Authority will maintain responsibility for security within the territory—to the extent that Israel allows Palestinian police the authority and capacity. Palestinian security forces will still have a duty to protect civilians within Gaza and to prevent indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Under international law, the test for determining whether an occupation exists is effective control by a hostile army, not the positioning of troops,” Whitson said. “Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control.”

Under international law, the duties of an occupying power are detailed in the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations. According to The Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

END OF ARTICLE

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

PATTERNS OF ISRAELI ATTACKS ON RESIDENTIAL

HOMES IN GAZA MUST INVESTIGATED AS WARCRIMES

17 MAY 2021

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/05/israelopt-pattern-of-israeli-attacks-on-residential-homes-in-gaza-must-be-investigated-as-war-crimes/

Israeli forces have displayed a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians by carrying out a number of airstrikes targeting residential buildings in some cases killing entire families – including children – and causing wanton destruction to civilian property, in attacks that may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, said Amnesty International today.

The organization has documented four deadly attacks by Israel launched on residential homes without prior warning and is calling for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently investigate these attacks. The death toll in Gaza continues to climb with at least 198 Palestinians killed including 58 children and more than 1,220 injured. Ten people in Israel, including two children, have been killed and at least 27 injured by Palestinian attacks.

“There is a horrific pattern emerging of Israel launching air strikes in Gaza targeting residential buildings and family homes – in some cases entire families were buried beneath the rubble when the buildings they lived in collapsed.  In the cases documented below, no prior warning was given to the civilian residents to allow them to escape. Under international humanitarian law, all parties must distinguish between military targets and civilian objects and direct their attacks only at military objectives. When carrying out attacks, parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians,” said Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Although the Israeli military has given no explanation of what military objectives it was targeting in these attacks, it is hard to imagine how bombing residential buildings full of civilian families without warning could be considered proportionate under international humanitarian law. It is not possible to use large explosive weapons, like aircraft bombs that have a blast radius of many hundreds of meters, in populated areas without anticipating major civilian casualties.

“By carrying out these brazen deadly attacks on family homes without warning Israel has demonstrated a callous disregard for lives of Palestinian civilians who are already suffering the collective punishment of Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza since 2007.”

The Israeli army claims that it only attacks military targets and has justified airstrikes on residential buildings on that basis. However, residents told Amnesty International that there were no fighters or military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks documented.

“Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian property and infrastructure are war crimes, as are disproportionate attacks. The International Criminal Court has an active investigation into the situation in Palestine and should urgently investigate these attacks as war crimes. States should also consider exercising universal jurisdiction over those who commit war crimes. Impunity only works to fuel the pattern of unlawful attacks and civilian bloodshed, which have we have repeatedly documented in previous Israeli military offensives on Gaza,” said Saleh Higazi.

At least 152 residential properties in Gaza have been destroyed since 11 May, according to the Gaza-based human rights organization, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza, Israeli strikes have destroyed 94 buildings, comprising 461 housing and commercial units while 285 housing units have been severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable.

According to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) more than 2,500 people have been made homeless due to the destruction of their homes and more than 38,000 people have been internally displaced and have sought shelter in 48 UNRWA schools across Gaza.

Indiscriminate rocket-fire by Palestinian armed groups towards civilian areas of Israel has also killed and injured civilians and damaged homes and other civilian properties. The rockets fired from Gaza into Israel are imprecise and their use violates international humanitarian law which prohibits the use of weapons that are by nature indiscriminate. These attacks should also be investigated by the ICC as war crimes.

Amnesty International has previously published evidence that the Israeli military had a deliberate policy of targeting family homes during the 2014 conflict.

Devastating attacks on family homes

In one of the heaviest episodes of bombardment since the latest fighting began, between 1am and 2am on 16 May Israel carried out airstrikes against residential buildings and streets in Gaza City. The attacks completely destroyed two residential buildings belonging to the Abu al-Ouf and al-Kolaq families – killing 30 people – 11 of them children. 

Gaza’s Ministry of Labour building was also destroyed in the attacks. The attack blocked al-Wehda Street, one of the main roads leading to the main hospital in Gaza, al-Shifa.

The families residing in the four-storey al-Ouf building, which included residential apartments and shops, received no prior warning – they were buried beneath the rubble in the attack. 

Yousef Yassin, a medic from al-Shifa Hospital, was one of the first to arrive on the scene of al-Ouf Building after the attack and helped pull survivors from the wreckage with the Red Crescent. He described the scene to Amnesty International as one of “great destruction”.

“I helped get out four dead [bodies], but there were many more. It was very hard. There was no warning, so people were inside their home sitting together, and this is a lively, bustling area,” he said. 

Shortly before midnight on 14 May Israeli air strikes hit the three-storey building of the al-Atar family in Beit Lahia killing 28-year-old Lamya Hassan Mohammed Al-Atar her three children Islam, seven, Amira, six, and Mohammed an eight-month-old baby. 

Lamya’s father, Hassan Al-Atar, a civil defence officer told Amnesty International he headed to the scene of the attack with an ambulance and rescue team after a relative called him with news of the attack.  “He told me that our home had been bombed and [he was] stuck under the rubble [with his] wife and children,” he said.

“I arrived at the house, which is made up of three stories – 20 people live there – I tried to find people, but I could not. Then the rescue team arrived to help and we eventually found my daughter, a mother of three, with her children, one of whom was a baby, under one of the cement pillars of the house; all of them were dead. The other residents seem to have managed to escape from an opening after the bombing and got to the hospital. I was shocked,” he said.

Nader Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Thom, from al-Salatin neighbourhood in Beit Lahia, described how his home where he lives with eight others was attacked without any warning shortly after midnight on 15 May.

“There was no warning missile, no warning call, the house was bombed, and we were inside. Thank God that the civil defence and by sheer chance was close by and saved us from under the rubble, thank God no one died. We had injuries but not serious, when we got out I saw a fire at the gate of the house, then the ambulance took us to the hospital. I think this is when I lost consciousness. Thank God no one was badly hurt but we lost our house. We are now in the street; we do not know where to go what to do.” 

His family sought shelter at an UNRWA school but the school they arrived at was closed when they arrived and they had to sleep outside in the school yard. His entire home was destroyed including his clothes, money and paperwork and all their belongings.

In addition to residential homes, Israeli attacks have damaged water and electricity infrastructure as well as medical facilities and halted the operations of the North Gaza Seawater Desalination plant, which supplies water to more than 250,000 people.  

END OF THE ARTICLE

[9]

WIKIPEDIA

DIXI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixi

FORMER LETTER TO CAF!


Astrid Essed 
Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 10:49 PM
to caf@caf.net

TOCAF 
Director and ManagementSubject: Involvement with the illegal Israeli settlements

Dear Director,Dear Management,

Sometimes I ask myself, how on earth it is possible, that there arestill companies, that work with notorious thieves and villains likeoccupation countries, helping them with stealing and robbering!Alas I have learnt, that your company, the Basque Spanish multinational CAF [Construcciones Y Auxiliar de Ferocarilles], is notorious for that, sincein August 2019, a consortium, led by your CAF and the Israeli infrastructurecompany Shapir was selected by Israel’s finance ministry, to lead the expansionof the Jerusalem Light Rail, serving Israel’s illegal settlements in occupiedPalestinian territory. Look for all the information under note 1!
I think it is a shame and disgrace, that your company signed for openly violatingInternational Law and human rights!Your company must be  beaten virtually for this.
ISRAELI OCCUPATION
Although it should not be necessary, for your sake someinformation about the Israeli settlements.Of course you know about the now 53 years Israeli occupation of thePalestinian territories the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza [2],despite UN Security Resolution 242 [3] and all subsequent resolutions.As an occupation regime, Israel is responsible for and guilty ofstructural repression, human rights violations and systematic warcrimes [4] and crimes of humanity like ethnic cleansings. [5]
So even when there were no illegal settlements, you should notcooperate with the Israeli occupation State!

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
You know, or else you should know, that all Israeli settlements, built onthe occupied Palestinian territories are illegal according under International Law,according to article 49. 4th Geneva Convention, as the the Hague Convention. [6]
Not only this settlement building is pure land theft, not seldom the settlers [theIsraeli inhabitants of the illegal settlements] are very agressive towards theoccupied Palestinian population as the Israeli human rights organization Btselem mentions.[7]And the worst part is, that those agressive settlers are often supported by Israeli Security Forces! [8]

EPILOGUE
I have presented you with the facts.The facts you already knew, or should have known otherwise.I don’t know, what’s worse.

By leading the expansion of the Jerusalem Light Railand thus serving  Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, you are notonly tainted by your cooperation with a criminal occupation regime, alsoyou are complicit in landtheft and de fcato expulsion of the occupiedPalestinian population from their own ground.
Is that the way you earn your money.Your BLOODmoney?
Shame on you!

If you have any conscience and decency, withdraw from youractivities, helping the illegal settlements in occupied Palestinianterritory.Evil practices.
If not:
Then History will put you on the black list, ading war criminalsand criminals against humanity.
DIXI! [Latin: I have said, I have spoken] [9]

Kind greetings
Astrid EssedAmsterdam The Netherlands

NOTES

[1]

WIKIPEDIAJERUSALEM LIGHT RAIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Light_Rail

INTERNATIONAL RAILWAY JOURNAL.COMCAF AND SHAPIR AWARDED JERUSALEM LIGHTRAIL PROJECT CONTRACT

TEXT

JERUSALEM Transportation Masterplan Team (JTMT) has awarded the TransJerusalem J-Net consortium, comprised of CAF and the construction firm Shapir, a €1.8bn contract to undertake an extension to the Jerusalem light rail network.

The Private-Public Partnership (PPP) includes the construction of 27km of new track, 53 new stations and various depots covering a 6.8km extension to the Red Line, and the new 20.6km Green Line. The Red Line is currently 13.8km long with 23 stations, and carries around 145,000 passengers daily.

The consortium will also design and supply 114 new Urbos LRVs for the Green Line, and the refurbishment of the 46 vehicles currently in service on the Red Line.

The contract includes the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation.

CAF’s share of the contract is worth more than €500m, and includes the vehicle’s supply and refurbishment, signalling, energy and communication systems and project integration. CAF will also have a 50% stake in the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines, which is expected to have a €1bn turnover.

Construction is expected begin later this year with the new extensions fully operational by 2025.

Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland) also submitted bids for the contract.

END OF ARTICLE 

”Of the eight entities that participated in the preliminary stages, only two consortiums submitted bids in the final stage. The other consortium consisted in the companies Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland). Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier are reported to have left the tender process at an earlier stage. The companies did not officially withdraw from the process due to political reasons. Nevertheless, the light rail development in Jerusalem has been criticized in the past as both lines run through the disputed area of East Jerusalem”
URBAN TRANSPORT MAGAZINECAF-SAPHIR CONSORTIUM WINS JERUSALEM GEEN LINELIGHT RAIL TENDER

TEXT

The transport authority JTMT (Jerusalem Transportation Masterplan Team) has chosen the TransJerusalem J-Net Ltd consortium, consisting in the CAF Group and the construction firm Saphir, for the Jerusalem light rail project. The project value is 1.8 billion EUR.

The so-called Green line is a PPP (Private-Public Partnership) scheme and includes the construction of 20.6 kilometres of new track, 53 stations and a depot. Jerusalem opened its’ first light rail line, the red line in 2011. The new Green line uses the current Red Line on a stretch of 6.8 km. The contract also includes the design and supply of 114 low-floor Urbos trams (which will be operated as double-tractions) for the new Green Line and the refurbishment of the 46 units which are currently in service on the existing Red Line.

114 Urbos trams and 25 years of operation

The project scope of the consortium will also include the supply of the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation. The CAF Group’s scope of this project exceeds 500 million EUR. The Group will also have a 50% stake in the company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines. The project is expected to be implemented this year with the new network fully operative by 2025.

The future network

The tram’s Red Line currently extends along 13.8 km with 23 stations distributed on the route, was inaugurated in 2011 and providing transport to over 145,000 passengers on average per day. The Green lines is expected to have a ridership of 200,000 passengers per day. It will link the two campuses of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continue south via Pat junction to Gilo while using a common section with the Red line in the city centre until the terminus of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem railway station which was inaugurated in 2018.

Of the eight entities that participated in the preliminary stages, only two consortiums submitted bids in the final stage. The other consortium consisted in the companies Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland). Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier are reported to have left the tender process at an earlier stage. The companies did not officially withdraw from the process due to political reasons. Nevertheless, the light rail development in Jerusalem has been criticized in the past as both lines run through the disputed area of East Jerusalem. 

END OF ARTICLEBDS MOVEMENTCAF/GET OF ISRAEL’S APARTHEID TRAIN

https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf

[2]
”Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAEL: DISENGAGEMENT WILL NOT

END GAZA OCCUPATION

https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/10/28/israel-disengagement-will-not-end-gaza-occupation

TEXT

Israeli Government Still Holds Responsibility for Welfare of Civilians

The Israeli government’s plan to remove troops and Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip would not end Israel’s occupation of the territory. As an occupying power, Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population.

Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

Under the plan, Israel is scheduled to remove settlers and military bases protecting the settlers from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank Jewish settlements by the end of 2005. The Israeli military will remain deployed on Gaza’s southern border, and will reposition its forces to other areas just outside the territory.

In addition to controlling the borders, coastline and airspace, Israel will continue to control Gaza’s telecommunications, water, electricity and sewage networks, as well as the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. Gaza will also continue to use Israeli currency.

A World Bank study on the economic effects of the plan determined that “disengagement” would ease restrictions on mobility inside Gaza. But the study also warned that the removal of troops and settlers would have little positive effect unless accompanied by an opening of Gaza’s borders. If the borders are sealed to labor and trade, the plan “would create worse hardship than is seen today.”

The plan also explicitly envisions continued home demolitions by the Israeli military to expand the “buffer zone” along the Gaza-Egypt border. According to a report released last week by Human Rights Watch, the Israeli military has illegally razed nearly 1,600 homes since 2000 to create this buffer zone, displacing some 16,000 Palestinians. Israeli officials have called for the buffer zone to be doubled, which would result in the destruction of one-third of the Rafah refugee camp.

In addition, the plan states that disengagement “will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” A report by legal experts from the Israeli Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the military made public on Sunday, however, reportedly acknowledges that disengagement “does not necessarily exempt Israel from responsibility in the evacuated territories.”

If Israel removes its troops from Gaza, the Palestinian National Authority will maintain responsibility for security within the territory—to the extent that Israel allows Palestinian police the authority and capacity. Palestinian security forces will still have a duty to protect civilians within Gaza and to prevent indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Under international law, the test for determining whether an occupation exists is effective control by a hostile army, not the positioning of troops,” Whitson said. “Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control.”

Under international law, the duties of an occupying power are detailed in the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations. According to The Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

[3]

WIKIPEDIA

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY RESOLUTION 

242

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242

[4]HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHRAIN OF FIRE: ISRAEL’S UNLAWFUL USE OF WHITE PHOSPHORUSIN GAZA
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/03/25/rain-fire/israels-unlawful-use-white-phosphorus-gaza

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHKILLING OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS DURING OPERATIONCAST LEAD
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead

”(Jerusalem) – At least 18 Israeli airstrikes during the fighting in Gaza in November 2012 were in apparent violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today after a detailed investigation into the attacks. These airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinian civilians, including 12 children.”
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHISRAEL: GAZA AIRSTRIKES VIOLATED LAWS OFWAR
https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/12/israel-gaza-airstrikes-violated-laws-war

AMNESTY INTERNATIONALA YEAR FROM DEADLY ISRAEL/GAZA CONFLICT, THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/11/year-deadly-israelgaza-conflict-nightmare-continues/

[5]

” Article 7 Crimes against humanity 1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: (a) Murder; (b) Extermination; (c) Enslavement; (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

ROME STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/Documents/RS-Eng.pdf

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ILLEGAL DEMOLITION AND FORICLE

TRANSFER OF BEDOUIN VILLAGE AMOUNTS 

TO WAR CRIME

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/israel-illegal-demolition-and-forcible-transfer-of-palestinian-bedouin-village-amounts-to-war-crime/
[6]
ILLEGALITY OF THE SETTLEMENTS

”Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”. 

The extensive appropriation of land and the appropriation and destruction of property required to build and expand settlements also breach other rules of international humanitarian law. Under the Hague Regulations of 1907, the public property of the occupied population (such as lands, forests and agricultural estates) is subject to the laws of usufruct. This means that an occupying state is only allowed a very limited use of this property. This limitation is derived from the notion that occupation is temporary, the core idea of the law of occupation. In the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the occupying power “has a duty to ensure the protection, security, and welfare of the people living under occupation and to guarantee that they can live as normal a life as possible, in accordance with their own laws, culture, and traditions.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

CHAPTER 3: ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL

LAW

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/

ARTICLE 49. 4TH GENEVA CONVENTION

ARTICLE 49 [ Link ]

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. 

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/1a13044f3bbb5b8ec12563fb0066f226/523ba38706c71588c12563cd0042c407

THE HAGUE CONVENTION

ARTICLE 55

”Art. 55. The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.

Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries – Hague Convention (IV) on War on Land and its Annexed Regulations, 1907 – –
Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries – Hague Convention (IV) on Wa…

[7]

BTSELEM.ORG

SETTLER VIOLENCE

https://www.btselem.org/topic/settler_violence

[8]

BTSELEM.ORG

ISRAELI SETTLERS STONE HOME IN BURIN, ESCORTED BY

SOLDIERS, WHO FIRE TEAR GAS AT RESIDENTS. CHILD FAINTS

FROM INHALATION

https://www.btselem.org/video/20201120_settlers_stone_homes_in_burin_and_soldiers_fire_tear_gas_at_residents#full

[9]

Definition of ’dixi’

dixiin British English

Latin (ˈdɪksɪ)EXCLAMATIONI have spoken
Dixi definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
Dixi definition and meaning | Collins English DictionaryDixi definition: I have spoken | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Letter to CAF about their continuing involvement in the illegal Israeli settlements

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A Christmas Carol/Travel through the Night

A CHRISTMAS CAROL/TRAVEL THROUGH THE NIGHT 

Kerststal Kerststal — Stockvector

And again a Family finds is way, on the flight for hunger, war,hunger, persecution?Who will tell?And then THEY are the happy ones! 
How often does it occur, that families are torn apart, the man goes alone, parents lose their children during the flight.A woman loses her husband.Loosing everything they hold dear.
They have to leave their dwelling residence to be registeredsomewhere on the orders of a dictator, a foreign occupier, whodon’t give a f….ck abolut their conditions.
Whether they are rich or poor, healthy or sick.If the wife is pregnant or not.
You have to leaveOr else……
Rich people can find a shelter, but poor peoplemust try to survive.
And what if you are pregnant and poor?What if you are a Palestinian woman, standingby a checkpoint, in occupied territory, in needof delivery, at the mercy of the grace of occupyingsoldiers, of oppressors?
NOWHERE WELCOMENOWHERE ALLOWED
Untill someone pities you and givesyou permission to deliver your Baby in hisbasement.In his stable.
Does that sound familiar?
Christmas Tale is not about cosiness, Family Togethering, buying largeand expensive presents, although that is nice.
It,s about exclusion, It’s about people, who are welcomed nowhere, who are oppressed
Because of their:POVERTYRELIGIONDESCENTRACE
DO I KNOW?
Do I know, what nasty things people think of in theirblindness, xenophobia, hatred, obsession for money, greed, racism and antisemitism, to humiliate others.
I don”\t know, what ugly things occupiers invent, whether they areIsraeli [Palestine], Chinese [Tibet], Moroccon [Western Sahara], or else,to humiliate the occupied people?
What a US president invents to hold back desperate migrants.Children in cages?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_family_separation_policy

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-27/presidential-immigration-debate-fact-check-and-who-built-the-cages

CHILDREN IN CAGESA CHILD BORN IN A STABLE
BOTH, NON WANTEDBOTH, NOT WELCOME
What atrocities are inventing by any dictator on this Planet?And don’t you forget their invisble Western and Chinese [and other]comrades in Evil, who want to flourish their multinationals indictatorial countries!
Christmas is all about exclusionBlocking people, who don’t have hope
AMSTERDAM
But let’s stay closer at home
Because it is the mayor of Amsterdam, and her predecessors,who left out in the cold those refugees, who couldn’t be deported,but yet had no rights, no shelter, no food.Refugees, who dwell in Amsterdam since 2012, year after year, withoutrights
https://wijzijnhier.org/who-we-are/

NOT WELCOMELIKE THE CHILD IN THE STABLE

CHRISTMAS/HOPE AND DESPAIR
Christmas is exclusion
But also the Unborn Child, on His Way with HisParents to Safety.
The Parents and the Unborn Child, they know aboutexclusion, being not welcome.Therefore they are in Solidarity with all opressed, discriminated, occupied, humiliated and torturedpeople of the Earth
The Child has come to this World to give them Hope
What are You doing, Reader?
GOOD CHRISTMAS DAYSWARM CHRISTMAS DAYS
Astrid Essed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBvkKGQ2ptU

Reacties uitgeschakeld voor A Christmas Carol/Travel through the Night

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Boycott Israel!/CAF transportsystem supports Israeli settlements and makes Blood Money!/Letter to CAF

BOYCOTT ISRAEL!/CAF TRANSPORTSYSTEM SUPPORTS ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS AND MAKES BLOOD MONEY!/LETTER TO CAF

  • A metro stop
  • CAFCreating rail solutions tailored to suit the needs of each and every customer.Front view of a high-speed train

CAF TRANSPORTSYSTEM, EARNING BLOOD MONEY BY SUPPORTING THEILLEGAL ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
https://www.caf.net/en/compania/index.php

https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf
Image result for settlements/Images

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS, ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

SEE FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION
https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf

LETTER
TOCAF 
Director and ManagementSubject: Involvement with the illegal Israeli settlements

Dear Director,Dear Management,

Sometimes I ask myself, how on earth it is possible, that there arestill companies, that work with notorious thieves and villains likeoccupation countries, helping them with stealing and robbering!Alas I have learnt, that your company, the Basque Spanish multinational CAF [Construcciones Y Auxiliar de Ferocarilles], is notorious for that, sincein August 2019, a consortium, led by your CAF and the Israeli infrastructurecompany Shapir was selected by Israel’s finance ministry, to lead the expansionof the Jerusalem Light Rail, serving Israel’s illegal settlements in occupiedPalestinian territory. Look for all the information under note 1!
I think it is a shame and disgrace, that your company signed for openly violatingInternational Law and human rights!Your company must be  beaten virtually for this.
ISRAELI OCCUPATION
Although it should not be necessary, for your sake someinformation about the Israeli settlements.Of course you know about the now 53 years Israeli occupation of thePalestinian territories the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza [2],despite UN Security Resolution 242 [3] and all subsequent resolutions.As an occupation regime, Israel is responsible for and guilty ofstructural repression, human rights violations and systematic warcrimes [4] and crimes of humanity like ethnic cleansings. [5]
So even when there were no illegal settlements, you should notcooperate with the Israeli occupation State!

ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS
You know, or else you should know, that all Israeli settlements, built onthe occupied Palestinian territories are illegal according under International Law,according to article 49. 4th Geneva Convention, as the the Hague Convention. [6]
Not only this settlement building is pure land theft, not seldom the settlers [theIsraeli inhabitants of the illegal settlements] are very agressive towards theoccupied Palestinian population as the Israeli human rights organization Btselem mentions.[7]And the worst part is, that those agressive settlers are often supported by Israeli Security Forces! [8]

EPILOGUE
I have presented you with the facts.The facts you already knew, or should have known otherwise.I don’t know, what’s worse.

By leading the expansion of the Jerusalem Light Railand thus serving  Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, you are notonly tainted by your cooperation with a criminal occupation regime, alsoyou are complicit in landtheft and de fcato expulsion of the occupiedPalestinian population from their own ground.
Is that the way you earn your money.Your BLOODmoney?
Shame on you!

If you have any conscience and decency, withdraw from youractivities, helping the illegal settlements in occupied Palestinianterritory.Evil practices.
If not:
Then History will put you on the black list, ading war criminalsand criminals against humanity.
DIXI! [Latin: I have said, I have spoken] [9]

Kind greetings
Astrid Essed AmsterdamThe Netherlands

NOTES

[1]

WIKIPEDIAJERUSALEM LIGHT RAIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Light_Rail

INTERNATIONAL RAILWAY JOURNAL.COMCAF AND SHAPIR AWARDED JERUSALEM LIGHTRAIL PROJECT CONTRACT

TEXT

JERUSALEM Transportation Masterplan Team (JTMT) has awarded the TransJerusalem J-Net consortium, comprised of CAF and the construction firm Shapir, a €1.8bn contract to undertake an extension to the Jerusalem light rail network.

The Private-Public Partnership (PPP) includes the construction of 27km of new track, 53 new stations and various depots covering a 6.8km extension to the Red Line, and the new 20.6km Green Line. The Red Line is currently 13.8km long with 23 stations, and carries around 145,000 passengers daily.

The consortium will also design and supply 114 new Urbos LRVs for the Green Line, and the refurbishment of the 46 vehicles currently in service on the Red Line.

The contract includes the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation.

CAF’s share of the contract is worth more than €500m, and includes the vehicle’s supply and refurbishment, signalling, energy and communication systems and project integration. CAF will also have a 50% stake in the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines, which is expected to have a €1bn turnover.

Construction is expected begin later this year with the new extensions fully operational by 2025.

Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland) also submitted bids for the contract.

END OF ARTICLE 

”Of the eight entities that participated in the preliminary stages, only two consortiums submitted bids in the final stage. The other consortium consisted in the companies Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland). Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier are reported to have left the tender process at an earlier stage. The companies did not officially withdraw from the process due to political reasons. Nevertheless, the light rail development in Jerusalem has been criticized in the past as both lines run through the disputed area of East Jerusalem”
URBAN TRANSPORT MAGAZINECAF-SAPHIR CONSORTIUM WINS JERUSALEM GEEN LINELIGHT RAIL TENDER

TEXT

The transport authority JTMT (Jerusalem Transportation Masterplan Team) has chosen the TransJerusalem J-Net Ltd consortium, consisting in the CAF Group and the construction firm Saphir, for the Jerusalem light rail project. The project value is 1.8 billion EUR.

The so-called Green line is a PPP (Private-Public Partnership) scheme and includes the construction of 20.6 kilometres of new track, 53 stations and a depot. Jerusalem opened its’ first light rail line, the red line in 2011. The new Green line uses the current Red Line on a stretch of 6.8 km. The contract also includes the design and supply of 114 low-floor Urbos trams (which will be operated as double-tractions) for the new Green Line and the refurbishment of the 46 units which are currently in service on the existing Red Line.

114 Urbos trams and 25 years of operation

The project scope of the consortium will also include the supply of the signalling, energy and communication systems, as well as the operation and maintenance of both lines for 15 and 25 years respectively, with the possibility of extending the term of operation. The CAF Group’s scope of this project exceeds 500 million EUR. The Group will also have a 50% stake in the company that will manage the operation and maintenance of both lines. The project is expected to be implemented this year with the new network fully operative by 2025.

The future network

The tram’s Red Line currently extends along 13.8 km with 23 stations distributed on the route, was inaugurated in 2011 and providing transport to over 145,000 passengers on average per day. The Green lines is expected to have a ridership of 200,000 passengers per day. It will link the two campuses of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continue south via Pat junction to Gilo while using a common section with the Red line in the city centre until the terminus of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem railway station which was inaugurated in 2018.

Of the eight entities that participated in the preliminary stages, only two consortiums submitted bids in the final stage. The other consortium consisted in the companies Shikun & Binui and Egged (Israel), CRRC (China), Comsa (Spain), Efatec (Portugal) and MPK (Poland). Siemens, Alstom and Bombardier are reported to have left the tender process at an earlier stage. The companies did not officially withdraw from the process due to political reasons. Nevertheless, the light rail development in Jerusalem has been criticized in the past as both lines run through the disputed area of East Jerusalem. 

END OF ARTICLEBDS MOVEMENTCAF/GET OF ISRAEL’S APARTHEID TRAIN

https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-caf

[2]
”Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

ISRAEL: DISENGAGEMENT WILL NOT

END GAZA OCCUPATION

https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/10/28/israel-disengagement-will-not-end-gaza-occupation

TEXT

Israeli Government Still Holds Responsibility for Welfare of Civilians

The Israeli government’s plan to remove troops and Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip would not end Israel’s occupation of the territory. As an occupying power, Israel will retain responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilian population.

Under the “disengagement” plan endorsed Tuesday by the Knesset, Israeli forces will keep control over Gaza’s borders, coastline and airspace, and will reserve the right to launch incursions at will. Israel will continue to wield overwhelming power over the territory’s economy and its access to trade.

“The removal of settlers and most military forces will not end Israel’s control over Gaza,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “Israel plans to reconfigure its occupation of the territory, but it will remain an occupying power with responsibility for the welfare of the civilian population.”

Under the plan, Israel is scheduled to remove settlers and military bases protecting the settlers from the Gaza Strip and four isolated West Bank Jewish settlements by the end of 2005. The Israeli military will remain deployed on Gaza’s southern border, and will reposition its forces to other areas just outside the territory.

In addition to controlling the borders, coastline and airspace, Israel will continue to control Gaza’s telecommunications, water, electricity and sewage networks, as well as the flow of people and goods into and out of the territory. Gaza will also continue to use Israeli currency.

A World Bank study on the economic effects of the plan determined that “disengagement” would ease restrictions on mobility inside Gaza. But the study also warned that the removal of troops and settlers would have little positive effect unless accompanied by an opening of Gaza’s borders. If the borders are sealed to labor and trade, the plan “would create worse hardship than is seen today.”

The plan also explicitly envisions continued home demolitions by the Israeli military to expand the “buffer zone” along the Gaza-Egypt border. According to a report released last week by Human Rights Watch, the Israeli military has illegally razed nearly 1,600 homes since 2000 to create this buffer zone, displacing some 16,000 Palestinians. Israeli officials have called for the buffer zone to be doubled, which would result in the destruction of one-third of the Rafah refugee camp.

In addition, the plan states that disengagement “will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” A report by legal experts from the Israeli Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the military made public on Sunday, however, reportedly acknowledges that disengagement “does not necessarily exempt Israel from responsibility in the evacuated territories.”

If Israel removes its troops from Gaza, the Palestinian National Authority will maintain responsibility for security within the territory—to the extent that Israel allows Palestinian police the authority and capacity. Palestinian security forces will still have a duty to protect civilians within Gaza and to prevent indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Under international law, the test for determining whether an occupation exists is effective control by a hostile army, not the positioning of troops,” Whitson said. “Whether the Israeli army is inside Gaza or redeployed around its periphery and restricting entrance and exit, it remains in control.”

Under international law, the duties of an occupying power are detailed in the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations. According to The Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

[3]

WIKIPEDIA

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY RESOLUTION 

242

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242

[4]HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHRAIN OF FIRE: ISRAEL’S UNLAWFUL USE OF WHITE PHOSPHORUSIN GAZA
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/03/25/rain-fire/israels-unlawful-use-white-phosphorus-gaza

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHKILLING OF PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS DURING OPERATIONCAST LEAD
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead

”(Jerusalem) – At least 18 Israeli airstrikes during the fighting in Gaza in November 2012 were in apparent violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today after a detailed investigation into the attacks. These airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinian civilians, including 12 children.”
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHISRAEL: GAZA AIRSTRIKES VIOLATED LAWS OFWAR
https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/12/israel-gaza-airstrikes-violated-laws-war

AMNESTY INTERNATIONALA YEAR FROM DEADLY ISRAEL/GAZA CONFLICT, THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/11/year-deadly-israelgaza-conflict-nightmare-continues/

[5]

” Article 7 Crimes against humanity 1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: (a) Murder; (b) Extermination; (c) Enslavement; (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

ROME STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/Documents/RS-Eng.pdf

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

ILLEGAL DEMOLITION AND FORICLE

TRANSFER OF BEDOUIN VILLAGE AMOUNTS 

TO WAR CRIME

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/israel-illegal-demolition-and-forcible-transfer-of-palestinian-bedouin-village-amounts-to-war-crime/
[6]
ILLEGALITY OF THE SETTLEMENTS

”Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”. 

The extensive appropriation of land and the appropriation and destruction of property required to build and expand settlements also breach other rules of international humanitarian law. Under the Hague Regulations of 1907, the public property of the occupied population (such as lands, forests and agricultural estates) is subject to the laws of usufruct. This means that an occupying state is only allowed a very limited use of this property. This limitation is derived from the notion that occupation is temporary, the core idea of the law of occupation. In the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the occupying power “has a duty to ensure the protection, security, and welfare of the people living under occupation and to guarantee that they can live as normal a life as possible, in accordance with their own laws, culture, and traditions.”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

CHAPTER 3: ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL

LAW

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/

ARTICLE 49. 4TH GENEVA CONVENTION

ARTICLE 49 [ Link ]

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.
The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.
The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. 

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/1a13044f3bbb5b8ec12563fb0066f226/523ba38706c71588c12563cd0042c407

THE HAGUE CONVENTION

ARTICLE 55

”Art. 55. The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.

Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries – Hague Convention (IV) on War on Land and its Annexed Regulations, 1907 – –
Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries – Hague Convention (IV) on Wa…

[7]

BTSELEM.ORG

SETTLER VIOLENCE

https://www.btselem.org/topic/settler_violence

[8]

BTSELEM.ORG

ISRAELI SETTLERS STONE HOME IN BURIN, ESCORTED BY

SOLDIERS, WHO FIRE TEAR GAS AT RESIDENTS. CHILD FAINTS

FROM INHALATION

https://www.btselem.org/video/20201120_settlers_stone_homes_in_burin_and_soldiers_fire_tear_gas_at_residents#full

[9]

Definition of ’dixi’

dixiin British English

Latin (ˈdɪksɪ)EXCLAMATIONI have spoken
Dixi definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

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