The European Union criticised Israel on Monday for what it called continued settlement activity on Palestinian land, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was still in Paris after a Euro-Mediterranean summit. A statement issued by the French EU presidency said the 27-nation bloc was "deeply concerned" by an Israeli decision to issue a call for tenders for new housing units in Arab East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. "This decision serves to undermine the credibility of the ongoing diplomatic process," the EU statement said. The statement, while Olmert was in Paris to attend France's Bastille Day military parade and meet U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, appeared to be a consolation to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Palestinian officials said Abbas was angered by the failure to mention Israeli settlements and the occupation of Palestinian land in the final communique of the 43-nation founding summit of the Union for the Mediterranean on Sunday. However, Israeli officials said the information on which the EU statement was based was either inaccurate or not new. The statement referred to a decision to issue a call for tenders for the construction of 920 housing units in the settlement of Har Homa, south of Jerusalem, and of 884 housing units in the settlement of Pisgat Zeev, north of Jerusalem. In June, the Israeli Housing Ministry approved construction of 763 units in Pisgat Zeev plus 121 units in Har Homa, which the Palestinians call Jabal Abu Ghneim in June. The Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee gave preliminary approval last week to 920 housing units in Har Homa, in a move that fell short of issuing tenders. The plan still requires approval by a Jerusalem local council, where the public can lodge objections. The EU said it was illegal under international law to build settlements anywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. "Settlement activities prejudge the outcome of final-status negotiations and compromise the viability of a concerted two-state solution," it said. Olmert and Abbas met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday after the Israeli leader said afterwards the two sides had never been so close to a possible peace agreement.
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By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
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Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
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John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
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Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 04/05/2010
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US Envoy Visits Israel for 'Indirect' Negotiations
President Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday for expected indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel voiced doubt about any breakthrough without direct negotiations. Hours before the US envoy, George Mitchell, flew into Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, conferred in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh about the upcoming US-mediated negotiations. Mr Obama's peace efforts received a boost on Saturday when Arab states approved four months of "proximity talks", whose expected start in March was delayed by Israel's announcement of a settlement project on occupied land near Jerusalem. An Israeli Defence Ministry strategist Amos Gilad said on Israel Radio that the indirect negotiations would begin on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the envoy would hold talks with the Palestinian side. The executive committee of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to meet only on Saturday to give the formal nod to start the negotiations. The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor described indirect talks as "a strange affair" after face-to-face peace negotiations stretching back 16 years. There have been no direct talks for the past 18 months, a period that has included Israel's Gaza war, the election of a right-wing Israeli government and entrenched rule in the Gaza Strip by Hamas Islamists opposed to the US peace efforts. "I think it is clear to everyone that real talks are direct talks, and I don't think there is a chance of a significant breakthrough until the direct talks begin," Mr Meridor said. "The talks will be held. The envoy, Mr Mitchell, will talk to us, to them. But the more we hasten to arrive at direct talks, the more we will be able to address the heart of the matter." Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas, said the negotiations would show whether the Israeli government was serious about peace and "test the sincerity" of the Obama administration in pursuing Palestinian statehood. "The truth is we are not in need of negotiations. We are in need of decisions by the Israeli government. This is the time for decisions more than it is the time for negotiations," Mr Rdainah said. In an interview published on Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, Mr Abbas said Mr Obama had given a commitment he would not allow "any provocative measures" by either side. Mr Abbas has long insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before any negotiations resume, and he had rejected as insufficient a temporary construction moratorium that Mr Netanyahu ordered in the occupied West Bank last November.
Date: 04/06/2009
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US-Israeli Relationship Takes New Direction
After George W. Bush’s terms of endearment for Israel — a country he once described as a “light unto nations” — a different terminology is being used to describe its cloudy relationship with his successor, Barack Obama. At odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Palestinian statehood and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the new US president will try to patch ties with the Muslim world in an address he will deliver in Egypt tomorrow. Israelis and Arabs will be listening carefully for one of Obama’s expected messages — policy Netanyahu has met with defiant words — that creation of a Palestinian state is essential for peace and settlement expansion must stop. The US-Israeli rift after eight years of a Bush presidency that pursued statehood only late in its second term and turned a blind eye to settlement building is raising questions over whether a close alliance will deteriorate into alienation. Maariv, a popular Israeli newspaper, summed it up in a one-word, front-page headline on Tuesday: “Pressure”. “The president doesn’t want to see even one cement mixer in the West Bank,” an Israeli political source, briefed by Netanyahu aides, quoted US Middle East envoy George Mitchell telling an Israeli delegation that met him in London last week. Possible scenarios for twisting Netanyahu’s arm could range from US inaction at the United Nations in thwarting resolutions critical of Israel to choking off some military supplies, political sources and commentators said. “Delaying the shipment of spares for the Apaches can ground the air force,” political columnist Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv, referring to Israel’s US-made attack helicopters. “The replenishment of ammunition and weapons supplies in the event of another expected conflagration in the Gaza Strip or Lebanon is a matter of American goodwill,” Caspit said. Few expect Washington ever to go as far as to hurt Israel’s defenses, but it does have other diplomatic pressure points. Yet appeasing the United States by abandoning a settlement policy that allows “natural growth”, construction which Israel says is to accommodate growing settler families, could tear apart Netanyahu’s two-month-old right-leaning coalition. “If he gives up on natural growth, it will break his coalition,” the Israeli political source said. “Netanyahu is not willing to pay the price. The outposts are all he can give,” the source said of dozens of small settlements which Israel has long pledged to remove under a 2003 US-backed “road map” to peace with the Palestinians. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, sent by Netanyahu to the United States this week to meet with government officials to try to ease friction, has promised to move against two dozen of the outposts, some only clusters of caravans on isolated hilltops. “The situation is very gloomy. They are waiting to see what Barak can achieve in Washington,” the source said.
Date: 01/04/2009
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Netanyahu Set for Inauguration as Israel's Leader
Benjamin Netanyahu was to be sworn in as Israel's prime minister Tuesday, returning to a post he held a decade ago and with no explicit commitment to the internationally-backed goal of Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu, 59, planned to ask parliament to ratify his right-leaning coalition government at a session starting at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT), officials said. Debate could last for hours. After it votes its approval, he will take the oath of office and replace Ehud Olmert, whose three-year tenure was marked by a reopening of land-for-peace talks with the Palestinians, wars against Islamist militants in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip -- and the corruption scandal that led to his resignation. "The government I am forming will do its utmost to achieve a just and lasting peace with all our neighbors and the Arab world in general," Netanyahu told parliament Monday. But in that address, Netanyahu again made no mention of the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the main goal of peace efforts backed by its ally the United States. His coalition's guidelines, however, contain a pledge to respect all of Israel's international agreements -- a formula that includes 1990s accords envisaging a Palestinian state. Anything less than an explicit commitment to what is called the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could put Netanyahu on a collision course with Washington and the European Union, which has already voiced concern on the matter. Palestinian officials say Netanyahu must clearly endorse statehood for peace talks, currently frozen, to succeed. He has said he wants to focus negotiations on shoring up the Palestinian economy in the West Bank rather than on territorial issues that have blocked progress toward a settlement. ISOLATION Israeli officials, diplomats and analysts have predicted Netanyahu would sidestep isolation by easing slowly into talks on statehood and opening a separate peace track with Syria. They said Netanyahu, who served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, was likely to make clear to world powers that he -- and not ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, who will serve as his foreign minister -- makes the decisions on diplomacy. World powers also await Netanyahu's moves on Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, which he has long promoted. He defends expanding existing settlements. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama wants Israel to freeze such construction, and is considering cutting U.S. loan guarantees to penalize Israel and to show Netanyahu's government that Washington is serious about the issue this time, Western diplomats familiar with the deliberations said. Iran's nuclear program and its threat to Israel, Netanyahu said, would be high on his government's agenda. Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, and the United States assert that Iran is trying to develop an atomic bomb, an allegation Tehran denies. In a speech Monday, Olmert urged Netanyahu to embrace clearly a two-state formula to ensure that Israel maintains its Jewish population majority -- an alternative, annexing the West Bank and Gaza to Israel, could mean an Arab majority in time. Olmert resigned in September in a corruption scandal in which police alleged he pocketed cash-filled envelopes from an American Jewish businessman. The veteran politician, who stayed on as caretaker prime minister, awaiting formation of a new government after the February 10 election, has denied any wrongdoing. On paper, Netanyahu commands up to 69 seats -- 13 of them held by Labor -- in the 120-member Knesset, although the margin could be cut by desertions by left-wing Labor lawmakers opposed to its coalition deal with Likud. Labor chief Ehud Barak stays on as defense minister but faces revolt in Labor's ranks. Netanyahu has put together one of the largest cabinets in Israeli history -- 30 ministers -- in forging partnerships with Labor and right-wing and Jewish Orthodox religious parties.
Date: 21/10/2008
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Israel's Livni Gets More Time to Form Government
Tzipi Livni will have another two weeks to try to form a government and become Israel's prime minister after receiving on Monday an extension to an original 28-day presidential mandate to put together a coalition. Foreign Minister Livni, elected leader of the centrist Kadima party last month, would take over as prime minister from Ehud Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal but remains in office until a new government is established. At a meeting with President Shimon Peres, Livni requested and received an additional 14 days to try to finalize a governing coalition, a spokesman for Peres said. From the outset, commentators had expected Livni would need a full six weeks to negotiate coalition deals. "Yes, you need more time ... I am ready to help," Peres told Livni, who said at his office that she would "bring a government to life" to deal with the current period of economic instability. "We can reach decisions and wrap things up," Livni said. The question remains whether Livni, who has already won preliminary agreement from Defense Minister Ehud Barak's Labour Party to join a government under her leadership, can persuade the ultra-Orthodox Shas party to sign up. With Labour in her corner, Livni would control 48 of the 120 seats in parliament. Shas's membership would boost that number to 60, a wafer-thin coalition but enough to block the opposition from toppling her government in no-confidence votes. Winning the support of smaller factions, such as the Pensioners party, with seven lawmakers, and left-wing Meretz, with five, would give Livni a stronger mandate to pursue policies that include peacemaking with the Palestinians. Shas, which has long billed itself as a party that represents Israel's poor, has been demanding increased government spending of about 1 billion shekels ($270 million) on social welfare as a price for joining a Livni-led coalition. Negotiations between Kadima and Shas are likely to be stepped up, amid speculation that Livni intends to present a government when parliament reconvenes on October 27 after its summer recess. Without Shas, she could form a minority government relying on precarious support from outside the coalition of left-wing and Arab parties wary of a national ballot that opinion polls show Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud would win. An early election, ahead of voting not due until 2010, would be likely should Livni fail to establish a government.
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