The week began on Sunday, July 13 with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledging to free Palestinian prisoners unconnected to proposed prisoner deals with Hamas and Hizbullah, as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert made the pledge at a meeting with Abbas and French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the sidelines of the Union for the Mediterranean summit in France. Speaking at a press conference following the three-way meeting, Olmert claimed that a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has never been closer.
"It seems to me that we have never been as close to the possibility of reaching an accord as we are today," Olmert told reporters standing alongside Abbas and Sarkozy.
At the same time, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mash’al renewed his movement's commitment to the Yemeni initiative for internal Palestinian reconciliation during a meeting with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. Mash'al said the two discussed the possibility of expanding Arab involvement in efforts to reinitiate direct talks between Hamas and its rival, Fatah, which is led by the Palestinian President.
He stated that his “visit to Sana’a is aimed at discussing all the issues regarding developments of the Palestinian cause, especially during the truce and completely ending the blockade imposed over the Gaza Strip. It is also aimed at forming supporting Arab attitudes for Palestinian rights as well as ending atrocities against Gaza and the West Bank.”
July 14 saw Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak approving the Israeli army plan to complete the prisoner swap with Hizbollah. Joint military police, rabbinates and other logistic units took part in the return of captured Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser to Israel through the border at the Nakura crossing, the northern Israeli border with Lebanon.
Both Regev and Goldwasser were returned dead, and were probably killed during capture or died shortly after their capture during a raid on occupied Lebanese territory on July 12, 2006. On Sunday the Israeli prison services published a list of the names of five Lebanese detainees who were to be released in the prisoners swap. The list includes Samir Quntar, who was convicted of killing two Israelis in 1979. These releases took place on July 16.
News of this swap was followed on July 18 by an interview with a Tel Aviv radio station with Ahmad Tibi, head of the Arabic Movement for Change, a party in the Israeli Knesset, in which he criticised the retention of the bodies of Palestinians by Israel. Israel still holds a number of Palestinian and Lebanese bodies, but has refused to release any information concerning their identity.
While expressing his happiness at the release of 199 bodies as part of the prisoner swap between Hizbullah and Israel, he condemned Israel for the retention of the bodies in the first place and attacked them for still holding on to the corpses of an undisclosed number of Palestinians.
International Quartet envoy Tony Blair's planned trip to Gaza was cancelled on Tuesday following what was described as "specific security threats" that made the visit impossible. Although he was not there to meet with Hamas, the de facto government in Gaza, the Hamas government had put security measures in place, deploying extra police officers and cordoning off areas Blair was intending to visit.
In the early hours of July 16, Israeli forces arrested five young Palestinians then confiscated computers and documents from a lawyer's office in Nablus. One of those arrested was 20-year-old Qadri Shaheen, son of the acting mayor of Nablus Hafidh Shaheen. More than 15 Israeli military vehicles stormed several neighbourhoods and arrested, along with the mayor's son: 17-year-old Hamza Al-Jawhari, 17-year-old Basim Kalbouna, 23-year-old Mu'min Al-Qaysi, 24-year-old Mus'ab Mi'ari and Karim Abu 'Issa.
Sources confirmed that Israeli forces ransacked the office of lawyer Faris Abu Al-Hasan in the center of the northern West Bank town of Nablus. The office's computers were confiscated along with any documents that recorded Israeli violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories as well as the files of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.
This follows on from last week’s reports of Israel’s crackdown in Nablus. Even in the early hours of Friday morning, Israeli forces launched a wide campaign of arrests and seized 15 locals at Madama and Asira, villages in the Nablus region, when they raided the area.
July 17 saw the High Court of Israel announcing that the house of the Al- Kurds family in east Jerusalem is set to be demolished. The decision is a reversal of an earlier order by the High Court that had originally decided to allow the family to remain in their home. The decision is the latest in the long dispute between the Al-Kurds and a Jewish group, which took over part of the property in 1999. The group claimed that the land had belonged to the Va'ad Sefaradi, a council of Rabbis, before 1948. The high court previously ruled that the settlers must leave the house and that the Al-Kurd family should remain, but no action was taken against the settlers and they remained in the house. The latest ruling states that no claim to the property could be authenticated and ruled that the family should vacate the house within 24 hours and that it should be demolished.
The family has stated that they are refusing to leave and will be joined by International and Israeli activists in an attempt to resist the eviction.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) has stated that the ruling "sets a dangerous precedent that could jeopardise the futures of another 27 Palestinian houses in east Jerusalem."
There were reports on Friday that Abu Dhabi's Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan discussed with international quartet committee envoy Tony Blair ways to support the Palestinian economy. It was widely reported that Al Nahyan and Blair discussed the developments in the Middle East and the peace process in the Palestinian territories in light of the difficult economic conditions experienced by the Palestinian people. During the meeting both emphasized the importance of international efforts to support the Palestinian economy and improve local living conditions. Both stressed the need for economic initiatives in order to implement a total peace in the Middle East.
In terms of violence against Palestinians, on July 13, Israeli police arrested a settler from the Yitshar settlement near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. He is suspected of manufacturing and launching homemade projectiles towards the village of Burin three weeks ago. Israel Radio reported that the Israeli army searched the settlement and found explosives and weapons.
On the same day, Israeli soldiers brutally beat, then arrested a Palestinian student in the village of Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem and arrested four other Palestinians in the southern West Bank. Witnesses said Israeli troops raided an apartment in the old section of Al-Khader, shouting at the occupants and claimed that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown at an Israeli vehicle in the area.
Twenty-one-year-old Nadim Issa, a physical education student at Al-Quds University, heard the noise from another apartment in the building and went to check up on his relatives. Following a heated argument, Issa scuffled with the soldiers, but was subdued, then severely beaten and arrested.
Also on Sunday, Israeli soldiers attempted to force three Palestinian women to undress at Al-Jalama checkpoint, on the Green Line north of Jenin, while travelling to visit their relatives in an Israeli jail. The women refused to undress and instead went home.
On the morning of July 14 a Palestinian was shot by Israeli soldiers, near Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. The Israeli authorities informed their Palestinian counterparts that soldiers opened fire on a Palestinian man, who was ten meters way from the border near the Kisufim crossing, east of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Palestinian security sources say that coordination is ongoing to transfer the injured man to hospital. It is unclear whether he is still alive.
As of July 16, the death toll of the Gaza blockade rose to 209 with the death of an elderly woman who was awaiting medical treatment. The woman was from the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. She had just been granted permission to leave Gaza for treatment in Israel, even though efforts to get the woman a permit had started over a month ago. Hundreds of patients are still waiting for permits to receive treatment outside the Gaza Strip.
Two young Palestinian men were shot by the Israeli army in Balata refugee camp in east Nablus and another 12 were detained in the Askar refugee camps after a raid in the area at dawn on July 17. Palestinian security sources in Nablus said that Israeli forces raided the two Askar refugee camps and shot two Palestinians who were heading to their workplaces on Thursday morning near Balata refugee camp east of Nablus.
In other news, 3,350 Palestinians in Israeli jails began the Palestinian high school matriculation examination (the Tawjihi) on July 14 after Palestinian and Israeli officials struck an agreement.
The Palestinian Minister of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Ashraf Al-Ajrami, said he met with Israeli prison authorities and secured their cooperation, allowing young Palestinians in Israeli prisons to take the examination, which constitutes a major milestone in the education process for Palestinian students, viewed as an assessment of the students' primary and secondary education and required for graduation from high school and entrance into university.
UN Resolution 1325
Date posted: February 03, 2021
By MIFTAH
Kerry talks peace while Israel bars UNESCO mission [May 19 - May 25]
Date posted: May 25, 2013
By MIFTAH
President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both met with US Secretary of State John Kerry this week in the latter’s fourth visit to the region since he assumed office.
After meeting with the two to ostensibly find ways to restart stalled negotiations between the two sides, Kerry urged on May 24 both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take "hard decisions" to revive the peace process.
"We're getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made," he said at the end of his visit.
Kerry admitted a day before after meeting with the two leaders that there was skepticism and cynicism about his efforts to revive talks.
"I know this region well enough to know there is skepticism, in some quarters there is cynicism, and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," he said. Still, he maintained: "It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay on a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people and certainly exhaust the possibilities for peace."
British foreign secretary William Hague was also in the region visiting with leaders on both sides and even visited the Bedouin community of Khan Al Ahmar between Jerusalem and Jericho, whose residents are under the threat of displacement.
On May 23, Hague was poignantly clear on where his country stands on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "Israel has lost some of its support in Britain and in other European countries over time - this is something I've often pointed out to Israeli leaders -because of settlement activity, which we condemn,” he said.
"We strongly disagree with settlements on occupied land. Israel is a country we work with in many ways but we do disapprove of settlements,” he maintained, adding that: "We want to see both Israelis and Palestinians really commit themselves to the peace process while there is still a chance of a two-state solution."
In Khan al Ahmar, Hague listened to the residents’ grievances from Israeli efforts to push them out to make way for more settlement expansion. "We (in Britain) strongly condemn the building of settlements and recognise they are a severe threat to a two-state solution,” he told the people there.
On March 21, Israeli forces demolished two residential buildings in the Jabal al-Mukabbir in East Jerusalem. Earlier, they demolished two Palestinian homes in al-Tur, all under the pretext of unlicensed construction. Dozens of people have been left homeless from the demolitions.
A UNESCO fact-finding mission was supposed to arrive this week to look into Israeli measures in the Old City of Jerusalem and their impact on the archeological, cultural and heritage significance of the place, but was denied entry by Israel on May 20. Israel justified its decision by saying Palestinians were trying to politicize the visit.
"The Palestinians were not respecting the understandings,” an Israeli foreign ministry official said. “The visit was supposed to be professional, (but) they were taking measures that showed they were politicizing the event and not letting the delegation focus on professional sides of it," the official said.
UNESCO maintained that the mission was not cancelled, but postponed, the agency’s spokeswoman Sue Williams said.
The Palestinians said they expected Israel to pull something like this. “We weren't surprised by this decision because we believed that Israel's agreement to (allow the mission) was not convincing," minister of foreign affairs Riyad Al Malki said.
The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was reopened on May 22 after a five day closure. Egyptian soldiers and policemen closed the crossing following the kidnapping of seven Egyptian soldiers in Sinai, only reopening it after the soldiers were freed. Over 2,400 Palestinians had been stranded on both sides of the crossing during the days of the closure.
Extremist Israelis extended their attacks this week all the way to the Negev desert. On May 19, residents of the Retamim Kibbutz attacked the nearby Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj and set fire to a tent, according to head of the local village council, Salman Ibin Hamid
"The setters of Retamim are acting like they are in the West Bank," Ibn Hamid said. "These people have the mentality of the occupying settler to attack every Arab."
Finally, on May 23, the US appointed Gen. John Allen as special envoy on security issues in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. According to a US official, Allen will deal with the U.S. position on Israeli security needs and the security arrangements that would accompany the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
Al Nakba commemorated amid increasing settler attacks [May 12 - May 18]
Date posted: May 18, 2013
By MIFTAH
This week Palestinians commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948 on May 15, with a variety of activities, demonstrations and events throughout the Palestinian territories and outside of its borders. Festivals were held in Ramallah and Nablus in addition to several protests and confrontations with Israeli occupation forces. In Jerusalem, clashes broke out between protesters and Israeli police and border guards when Palestinians commemorating Al Nakba, raising Palestinian flags and facing off with Jewish settlers and soldiers. Thirty people were wounded or arrested during the clashes in addition to six Israelis.
The Jerusalem clashes come at a time when settler break-ins to Al Aqsa have been on the rise amid increasing calls by extremist Jewish groups to make a presence at the compound. The break-ins have become a near daily event. Muslim worshippers and Palestinian youths have kept constant vigil at the mosque to stave off the break-ins which included settler groups who used children as a cover to enter the compound on the occasion of Shavuot.
Settlers in the West Bank have wreaked havoc this week as well. On May 17, three Palestinians were injured in clashes in Urif south of Nablus when dozens of settlers set fire to lands in three area-villages: Urif, Einabus, and Asira al-Qibliya. The settlers also attacked citizens and threw burning tires at people’s homes.
Jewish extremists attacked inside the Green Line as well. On May 14, extremists set fire to three cars and sprayed racist graffiti on a mosque south of Haifa, according to Israeli media reports.
"Price-tag" and "Eviatar," which is thought to refer to the name of a settler stabbed to death last week, were found on the mosque’s walls in addition to the Star of David. In Safed, even farther north, racist graffiti with the words "Arabs out" was found on walls in the city.
On May 13, Israeli settlers exhumed a number of graves and sprayed racist graffiti in the Sawiya village in Nablus. Ghassan Daghlas, head of the PA settlement activity file, said settlers from the Alia settlement were responsible for the damage.
On the same day settlers from Tel Hatimar begin building a religious school for children on Al Khader lands in the Bethlehem area.
The Israeli army meanwhile, uprooted over 1,200 olive tree saplings on May 16 and razed land Palestinian farmer in the northern West Bank, according to Daghlas. He said the army dug up over 40 dunums of farm land and demolished a water tank and stone walls in Ras Karker, near Nablus.
On May 17, three Palestinian laborers were wounded in Beit Ula northwest of Hebron after Israeli forces fired rubber-coated steel bullets and unleashed police dogs at them according to Issa al-Amla, coordinator for the popular struggle committee. He said Omar Al-Amla, 31, and Abdulkadir Al-Amla, 28, suffered multiple dog bites to the neck and hands. A third laborer, Jihad Saleem, was shot in the leg.
In Jerusalem on May 17, Israeli forces raided the home of Iyad al-Awar and insisted on taking his two children 6-year-old Qassam and 5-year-old Nasrallah for “interrogation”. While their father prevented the forces from arresting his boys, Israeli soldiers handed him a warrant ordering him to bring his children to the Russian Compound for questioning.
"We arrived to the Russian Compound and the troops wanted to take my kids for investigation; I refused and they beat me in the ear and the leg. My kids started crying and were so scared from the troops. They took my kids by force," al-Awar said.
Israeli Intelligence officers apparently questioned the children about their detained cousin Shadad, and asked if they had seen him throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces, Al Awar said.
On the same day however, Palestinians scored a tiny victory in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis when they were able to tear a hole through part of the separation wall. Protesters marking the Nakba anniversary ripped a 4-meter hole in it, eyewitnesses said. Clashes ensued between the protesters and Israeli soldiers who fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Several injuries were reported.
Peace Now reported on May 16 that the Israeli government planned to grant retroactive approval to four West Bank settlement outposts it had previously pledged to at least partially demolish.
The Israeli state attorney's office said that settlers had purchased the private Palestinian land on which they built, thus paving the way for the government to give its blessing.
"In the response, the government declares its intention to legalize four outposts, in isolated areas," Peace Now said in a statement, adding that the strategy was an affront to US Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to revive dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "The intention to legalize outposts as new settlements is no less than a slap in the face of Secretary Kerry's new peace process," Peace Now said.
On May 14, Hamas and Fatah agreed in Cairo to form a national unity government within three months during which they would finalize and approve the Palestine National Council elections law. The two sides, represented by Fatah leader Azzam Al Ahmad and Hamas politburo member Mousa Abu Marzouq, came to the agreement under Egyptian sponsorship and said President Abbas would immediately begin talks on the new government formation. Once the government is formed, general elections can be held.
