issue no 115

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Issue No : 115 29th December , 2014

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

PCOM’s Statement of Support and Solidarity with flood victims

Five Reasons Why

2014 Was a Game Changer in Palestine

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FEATURED STORY

Articles & Analyses

Read in This Issue

If Mary and Joseph Tried to Reach Bethlehem Today, They Would Get

Stuck at an Israeli Checkpoint

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Meshaal lauds Turkey for supporting Palestine

No change in India’s support to Palestine cause, Govt says

Israeli forces kill Palestinian man in Gaza

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Dozens arrested in Israel corrup-tion probe

P6Press Releases

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CONTENTS

Meshaal lauds Turkey for supporting Palestine 7

Israeli forces kill Palestinian man in Gaza 8

No change in India’s support to Palestine cause, Govt says 9

A muted Christmas in Gaza 10

Palestinian state bid should be ‹reworded›, Fatah leader says 11

Israeli forces crush Palestinian protests in West Bank 13

407 Jewish settlers storm Al-Aqsa for Hanukkah 14

Israeli troops raze Palestinian factory near Ramallah 15

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

News of Palestine

Israel Insider

Articles & Analyses

Press Releases

FEATURED STORY

2014 Was a Game Changer in Palestine 4

PCOM’s Statement of Support and Solidarity with flood victims 6

Dozens arrested in Israel corruption probe 16

If Mary and Joseph Tried to Reach Bethlehem Today, They Would Get 17

Stuck at an Israeli Checkpoint

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Featured Story

2014 Was a Game Changer in PalestineFive Reasons Why

23 Dec 2014

In terms of losses in human lives, 2014 has been a horrific year for Palestinians, surpassing the hor-rors of both 2008 and 2009, when anIsraeli war against the Gaza Strip killed and wounded thou-sands.

While some aspects of the con-flict are stagnating between a corrupt, ineffectual Palestinian Authority (PA), and the criminal-ity of Israeli wars and occupation, it would also be fair to argue that 2014 was also a game changer to some degree – and it is not all bad news.

To an extent, 2014 has been a year of clarity for those keen to understand the reality of the ‘Pal-estinian-Israeli conflict’ but were sincerely confused by the con-trasting narratives.

Here are some reasons that sup-port the argument that things are changing.

1. A Different Kind of Palestin-ian Unity

Although the two leading Pales-tinian parties Hamas and Fatah agreed to a unity government in April, little has changed on the ground. Yes, a government was officially established in June, and held its first meeting in October. But Gaza is effectively still man-aged by Hamas, which has been largely left alone managing the affairs of the Strip after the Is-raeli war in July-August. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas’s authority is hoping that the massive destruc-

tion would weaken Hamas into political submission, especially as Egypt continues to seal shut the Rafah border.

But while the factions are failing to unite, the Israeli war on Gaza has inspired a new impetus of struggle in the West Bank. Israeli plans of targeting holy sites in Jerusalem, particularly the al-Aqsa Mosque, coupled with the deep anguish felt by most Palestinians over the massacres carried out by Israel in Gaza, are slowly reverberat-ing into a wave of mini-uprisings. Some speculate the situation will eventually lead to a massive Inti-fada that will engulf all of the ter-ritories. Whether a third intifada takes place in 2015 or not, is a different question. What matters is that the long-orchestrated plot to divide Palestinians is breaking apart and a new collective narra-tive of a common struggle against occupation is finally forming.

2. A New Resistance Paradigm

The debate regarding what form of resistance Palestinians should or should not adopt is being side-lined and settled, not by interna-tional do-gooders, but by Palestin-ians themselves. They are opting to use whatever effective form of resistance they can that could de-ter Israeli military advances, as resistance groups have actively done in Gaza. Although Israel’s latest war killed nearly 2,200 and wounded over 11,000 Palestin-ians that were mostly civilians, nevertheless, it has still failed to

achieve any of its declared or im-plied objectives. It was another re-minder that sheer military strength is no longer the only overriding factor in Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians. While Israel brutal-ized civilians, the resistance killed 70 Israelis, over 60 of whom were soldiers; this was also an impor-tant step testifying to the maturity of Palestinian resistance, which had previously targeted civilians during the second intifada and reflected more desperation rather than a winning strategy. The legiti-mization of the resistance was to a degree, reflected in the recent decision by the European court to remove Hamas from its list of ter-rorist organizations.

Resistance in the West Bank is taking on other forms. Although it is yet to mature into a steady cam-paign of anti-occupation activities, it seems to be forming an identity of its own that takes into account what is possible and what is prac-tical. The fact is that the ‘one size fits all’ modes of resistance de-bate is becoming less relevant, giving way to an organic approach

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to resistance devised by Palestin-ians themselves.

3. BDS Normalizes Debate on Israeli Crimes

Another form of resistance is crystalizing in the Boycott, Divest-ment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) which continues to grow, gathering steam, supporters and constant achievements. Not only was 2014 a year in which BDS managed to win the support of numerous civil society organiza-tions, academicians, scientists, celebrities and to reach out to people from all walks of life, it did something else that is equally im-portant: It normalized the debate on Israel in many circles around the world. While any criticism of Israel was considered a taboo in yesteryears, it has been forever broken. Questioning the moral-ity and practicality of boycotting Israel is no longer a frightening subject, but is open for debate in numerous media outlets, univer-sities and other platforms.

2014 has been a year that made the discussion of boycotting Is-rael more mainstream than ever before. While a critical mass is yet to be achieved in the US, the momentum is constantly building up being led by students, clergy men and women, celebrities and ordinary people. In Europe, the movement has been hugely suc-cessful.

4. Parliaments are Feeling the Heat

While, traditionally, much of the southern hemisphere offered un-conditional support for Palestin-ians, the West conceitedly stood with Israel. Following the Oslo accords, a bewildering European position evolved, where they flirt-ed with finding the ‘balance’ be-tween an occupied nation and the occupier. At times, the European

Union (EU) timidly criticized the Israeli occupation, while continu-ing to be one of Israel’s largest trade partner, providing weapons to the Israeli army, who then use them to carry out war crimes in Gaza and sustain its military oc-cupation in the West Bank.

This debauched policy is being challenged by citizens of various European countries. The Israeli summer war on Gaza exposed Is-rael’s human rights violations and war crimes like never before, re-vealing along the way EU hypoc-risy. To relieve some of the pres-sure, some EU countries appear to be taking stronger stances against Israel, reviewing their mili-tary cooperation, and more boldly questioning the rightwing policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A spate ofparliamen-tary votes followed, overwhelm-ingly voting to recognize Palestine as a state. While these decisions remain largely symbolic, they rep-resent an unmistakable shift in EU attitude towards Israel. Ne-tanyahu continues to rail against European ‘hypocrisy’, assured, perhaps, by Washington’s uncon-ditional support. But with the US losing control over the tumultu-ous Middle East, the Israeli prime minister might soon be forced to rethink his obstinate attitude.

5. Israel’s Democracy Exposed

For decades, Israel defined itself as both a democratic and Jewish state. The objective was clear: to maintain Jewish superiority over Palestinian Arabs, while continu-ing to present itself as a modern ‘western’ democracy – in fact, the ‘only democracy in the Mid-dle East.’ While Palestinians and many others were never sold on the democracy charade, many accepted the dichotomy with little questioning.

While Israel doesn’t have a con-stitution, it has a ‘code’, called the Basic Law. Since there is no Is-raeli equivalent to a ‘constitution-al amendment’ – the Netanyahu government is pushing for a new law at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. This will basically put forth new principalsunder which Israel will define itself. One of these principals will define Israel as ‘the national state of the Jew-ish people’, thus casting all non-Jewish citizens of Israel as lesser citizens. While, for all intents and purposes, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been treated as an outcast, and discriminating against in many ways, the new Basic Law will be a constitutional confirmation of their state-en-forced inferiority. The Jewish and democratic paradigm is dying for good, exposing Israel’s reality the way it is.

The Year AheadCertainly 2015 will bring much of the same: The PA will fight for its own existence, and try to maintain its privileges, bestowed by Israel, the US and others by using every tool available; Israel will also re-main emboldened by American funds and unconditional support and military backing. Yes, the next year will also prove frustrat-ingly familiar in that regard. But the new, real and opposing mo-mentum will unlikely cease, chal-lenging and exposing the Israeli occupation, on one hand, and sidestepping the ineffectual, self-serving Palestinian Authority on the other.

2014 was a very painful year for Palestine, but also a year in which the collective resistance of the Palestinian people, and their sup-porters, proved too strong to bend or break. And in that, there can be much solace.

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Press Releases

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News of Palestine

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Saturday praised Turkey as a “source of power” for all Muslims in grat-itude to Turkey’s leaders for supporting the Palestin-ian cause.

“A democratic, stable and developed Turkey is a source of power for all Muslims,” Meshaal said in an address to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) annual congress in the conservative central Anatolian city of Konya.

Meshaal said a “strong Turkey means a strong Je-rusalem, a strong Palestine,” voicing hopes to “lib-erate Palestine and Jerusalem,” according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.

His brief address was interrupted repeatedly by cheering crowds in the hall waving Turkish and Pal-estinian flags and chanting: “God is greatest” and “Down with Israel!”

The Hamas chief often shows up at the ruling party’s

Meshaal lauds Turkey for supporting Palestine

events. He also attended the AKP’s congress in 2012 when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was serving as prime minister.

Current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in his speech said Turkey’s red flag featuring a cres-cent with a star was a “symbol of the innocent in the world.”

“God is witness ... we will make this red flag a symbol of the innocent. This red flag will fly side by side with the flags of Palestine, free Syria and all other innocents’ flags anywhere in the world,” he told the congress.

Turkey’s leaders, in particular Erdogan, are known for their angry outbursts at Israel. A staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, Er-dogan has often blasted Israel over its military assaults on the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas. 27 Dec 2014 Source: MEE

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Israeli forces kill Palestinian man in GazaWarplanes hit southern Gaza

Israeli forces have killed a Pales-tinian man after a firefight along the border with the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian hospital officials in the territory.

Sources in Hamas have named the dead man as Tayseer As-mairi, a member of the group’s armed wing’s monitoring unit in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army said in a state-ment that a routine patrol on the Israeli side of the border came under attack on Wednesday from snipers in southern Gaza and that forces responded with fire from the ground and the air.

“In response to the firing at our forces who were east of the fence in the southern Gaza Strip, we carried out immediate attacks against the relevant tar-gets,” the statement said shortly after Palestinian medics con-firmed reports of a fatality in the same area.

The incident occurred in the Khan Younis area as Israeli workers were engaged in work on the border fence, Israeli me-dia said.

The work has been stopped fol-lowing what Israel described as the “gravest” incident since the Gaza war. The military instruct-ed Gazan farmers to keep away from the border area “for their own safety”.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment on any Is-raeli casualties in the clash.

‘Israel responsible’

Hamas blamed Israel for the deadly confrontation, saying that Israeli forces had busted the border fence.

“The Israeli occupation is re-sponsible for the tension east of Khan Younis. They tried to cross the border, provoking a response from Hamas,” spokes-man Sami Abu Zuhri said.

The group said that while it wanted calm, it would respond to Israeli actions, listing Israel’s air strikes as one form of viola-tion of the truce that ended the 50-day war in August.

On Friday, Israeli fighter jets

bombed a Hamas base in Gaza, just hours after a rocket launched earlier that day from the territory.

Israel launched its Gaza offen-sive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rock-et salvoes by Hamas.

The fighting was ended by an Egyptian-brokered truce on Au-gust 26.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in seven weeks of fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.

24 Dec 2014 Source: Al-Jazeera

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No change in India’s support to Palestine cause, Govt says

Dec 27, 2014

NEW DELHI: Amid speculation that India may be contemplating a shift in its Palestine policy, the government reiterated on Friday that there was no change in New Delhi’s policy of extending “traditional support’’ for the Palestinian cause even as it continues to maintain good relations with Israel.

Apart from external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s statement in Parliament earlier this year, which sought to allay apprehension that there was any change in India’s Palestine policy, the foreign ministry also referred to the recent message by PM Narendra Modi to the UN reaffirming support for the “just cause of Palestine and solidarity with the Pales-tinian people for their struggle”.

The message was meant to mark the International day of solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 24.

Source: The Times of India

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Christmas is hidden upstairs at the Toy Toy shop in the core of Gaza City.Visitors entering the small, unassuming store must as-cend a side staircase before stumbling upon a room full of Christmas goods - rows of red and green candles, shelves adorned with grinning elf dolls, a floor covered in shiny green wrapping paper.A lone employee, 24-year-old Hussam Abu Shaban, wraps snow-white garlands around a plastic tree and jokingly re-fers to himself as Gaza’s Santa.But in a city that has barely started to recover from a crush-ing summer war, this is no ordinary Christmas.Indeed, for many Christian residents of the besieged Gaza Strip, there is little to celebrate this holiday season.“This Christmas is not like last year,” Shaban tells Al Jazeera. “Most Christians just take a small tree for the kids. They’ve lost a lot of family members, some from the war, some not.”Wreckage from Israel’s 51-day assault on Gaza, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and displaced hundreds of thousands more, remains visible everywhere in the densely populated coastal enclave.Buildings demolished by air strikes still lie in jarring heaps of rubble, unfixed nearly four months after the bombs stopped falling.Driving through the streets of Gaza on Christmas Eve, it is tough to spot many signs at all of the holiday season.A few storefronts are festooned with pine boughs and shiny ornaments. But residents - even those who religiously cel-ebrate the holiday - are not putting Christmas on display.“There were a lot of Christians killed in this war. Chris-tian homes were destroyed,” Nabeel al-Salfiti, 62, tells Al Jazeera. “Every year it’s been tougher [to celebrate].”Christmas was already a humble celebration in Gaza. The vast majority of the strip’s 1.8 million residents are Muslim, with less than one percent identifying as Christian. And many of those are Orthodox, meaning they celebrate Christ-mas on January 7 rather than December 25.Shaban describes Christmas as a “uniting” force, noting many of the decorations that Toy Toy sells are purchased by Muslims.Even though the festive spirit has been more lacklustre this year than in ones previous, “we all like the decorations of Christmas”.But Salfiti, whose home brims with holiday cheer on the in-side, says he made a conscious decision to keep Christmas

A muted Christmas in Gaza

out of public view this year. “This is inside the house,” he ex-plains, adjusting his thick blue corduroy jacket as he gestures around his living room.Power cuts have left his home temporarily without electricity, but a single strip of battery-powered lights casts a glow over red Christmas place mats with gold tassels, a Santa-themed napkin holder, glittering red candles and, in one corner, the family Christmas tree. “We don’t show it outside in such cir-cumstances after the war.”His daughter, Elaine al-Salfiti, 18, wanted to go to Bethlehem with her mother this year to celebrate Christmas in the heart of the Holy Land.But Salfiti, clad in a sweater emblazoned with white snowflakes and reindeer, explains that her mother will be going alone, be-cause she cannot obtain the necessary travel permissions.

“It’s very depressing, because everyone I know travels to cel-ebrate and I’m left alone,” she tells Al Jazeera. The absence of Christmas in much of Gaza is not lost on her, either: “Here we feel isolated. There’s so much missing. It’s not pleasant, like before.”Many other Christians in Gaza say they do not wish to dis-cuss Christmas publicly, concerned that speaking to the media could get them in trouble and cause difficulties with obtaining permits to go to Bethlehem - especially amid increasingly brit-tle relations with Israel.“Christmas is inevitably coming with its decoration, its finery and its celebrations, but our inner souls are still affected, in all respects, by the devastating effects of war,” Nahed al-Dab-bagh, 25, tells Al Jazeera after attending Christmas Eve cer-emonies at the Latin Church in central Gaza City.“We hope that the next Christmas will be a feast of goodness and peace on the Palestinian people.”

25 Dec 2014 Source: Aljazeera

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Critical voices that include a jailed senior Fatah leader, emerged this week urging the Palestinian lead-ership to reword a UN proposal to end Israeli occupation, less than a week after a resolution was submitted at the 15-member Se-curity Council to that effect.

In a letter from an Israeli prison, Marwan Barghouti criticised the UN draft, urging the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to change it to reflect “a commit-ment to the people’s inalienable

Palestinian state bid should be ‹reworded›, Fatah leader says

national rights”.

On December 17, Jordan submit-ted a draft UN Security Council resolution on behalf of the Pales-tinians, calling for an end to the Israeli occupation by 2017, and setting a one-year timeline for peace talks. The proposal went through a series of changes that took into account a separate text drawn up by France, with Germa-ny and Britain’s help.

Convicted on multiple murder

charges arising from his role in the second Intifada, Barghouti has so far served 12 years in an Israeli prison.

He has long supported using the UN as a tool for diplomacy, but he said the current version of this resolution represented an “unjus-tified fallback which will adversely affect the Palestinian position”.

The Fatah official, who enjoys broad popularity among Palestin-ians, said the broader Palestin-

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ian leadership should reword the resolution to reflect the illegality of the settlements.

Figures released by Israel’s Cen-tral Bureau of Statistics last week showed that the Israeli settler population grew by almost 23 percent in the last four years, dur-ing Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-tanyahu’s time in office.

The population in Israel only grew by about 10 percent. There are approximately 200,000 settlers living in East Jerusalem, which proponents of the two-state so-lution envision as a capital for a future Palestinian state.

Barghouti criticised the proposal for failing to mention Palestinian prisoners. “The plight of prisoners may not be part of the final sta-tus issues, but it should be men-tioned in any resolution because prisoners’ freedom is a right and a precondition for peace,” he wrote. There are approximately 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

In the past few months, the Fatah leader has been vocal about dis-agreements with the PLO’s upper echelon on many issues, includ-ing the latest move at the UN. In April, he accused the Palestinian

leadership of neglecting the pris-oner issue.

“Never has a national liberation movement neglected and ignored the issue of the release of prison-ers such as the one in the Pales-tinian case,” wrote Barghouti in a communique.

“The PLO signed the Oslo [I] Ac-cord without preconditioning it on the release of a single prisoner, and without including any refer-ence, albeit a minute one, to pris-oners.”

The Palestinians have been threatening to go to the UN for months, demanding a timetable for the end of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusa-lem and Gaza. Palestinian Presi-dent Mahmoud Abbas has said he was open to further consulta-tion on the draft, another indica-tion that a vote on the resolution was not imminent.

“The current draft resolution does not meet the minimum afforded to Palestinians by international law,” said Hani al-Masri, a Ramallah-based political pundit.

“It excludes using the Palestin-ians trump cards, namely going to the ICC and turning to resis-tance and boycott. All it does is

put all the Palestinians’ eggs in the basket of negotiations.”

Israel had labelled the UN move a “gimmick” that would only aggra-vate the Palestinian-Israeli con-flict. “Certainly this [draft] will not hasten an agreement because without Israel’s consent, nothing will change,” Israeli Foreign Min-ister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.

According to Foreign Policy, US Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that two Israeli leaders - Hatnua Chairwoman Tzipi Livni and former President Shimon Peres - had asked him to stop the vote before Israeli elections took place in March, because it could pave the way for a more right-wing, anti-peace government.

Kerry did not rule out the possi-bility of Washington’s support for a more tempered version of the proposal, which would exclude a timetable for ending Israel’s military control, and a settlement of hotly contested issues, such as Jerusalem and refugees’ right of return, in the run-up to future talks.

24 Dec 2014 Source: Al Jazeera

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Israeli forces crush Palestinian protests in West Bank

Tens of Palestinians were wounded or suffered from gas inhalation after Israeli occupation forces at-tacked them during their weekly anti-wall protest, local Palestinian news agencyQudsnet reported on Friday.

Local Palestinian sources said that the protesters raised the Palestinian flag and the pictures of the late chief of the Palestinian anti-wall committee, Ziad Abu-Ein, who was killed by the Israeli occupation last week.

The Palestinian protesters chanted slogans in support of Palestinian unity and condemned the Israeli occupation and aggression. They also denounced Israel’s policy of land appropriation and called for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Several international delegations and activists took part in the anti-wall protests, including the head of the Japanese Football Association Kuzo Motto.

Coordinator of the popular anti-wall committee in Kafr Qaddoum, Khaldoun Ishtiwi, said that the Israeli occupation directly attacked the protesters and fired live bullets and gas canisters.

Ishtiwi said that a number of the Israeli peace activists and senior Palestinian officials also participated in the protests.

Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, the Israeli occupation attacked anti-wall protesters and prevented them from reaching the Separation Wall.

27 December 2014 Source: Agencies

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407 Jewish settlers storm Al-Aqsa for Hanukkah

At least 407 Jewish settlers forced their way into East Jerusalem’s flash-point Al-Aqsa Mosque complex during this week’s Hanukkah holidays, a Pal-estinian NGO said Thursday.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endow-ments and Heritage said that, from Sunday to Thursday, 407 Israelis – protected by Israeli police – had con-ducted individual and group tours in-side the mosque complex.

Of these, 52 were young Israeli troops who entered the complex in military uniform as part of a so-called “guid-ance and exploration” program, the NGO said.

“Occupation forces harassed Mus-lim worshippers at the gates of the mosque complex, arresting 20 over the past week,” it added.

It went on to say that detained wor-shippers had been subsequently re-leased after being subject to monetary fines and barred from entering the Al-Aqsa complex for periods ranging

from two weeks to one month.

Israeli officials could not be reached for comment on the issue.

Jewish settlers frequently force their way into the re-ligious site through the Al-Magharbeh Gate.

A number of Jewish groups had called on support-ers to storm the mosque compound this week to mark the advent of the Jewish Hanukkah holidays, or “Festival of Lights.”

For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site. Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount,” claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state in a move never recognized by the in-ternational community.

In September 2000, a visit to Al-Aqsa by controver-sial Israeli politician Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada,” a popular uprising against Israel’s decades-long occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.

25 Dec 2014 Source: Agencies

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Israeli troops on Tuesday demolished a Palestinian makeshift factory near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank under the pretext that it had been built without a permit, one of his owners said.

“An Israeli military force backed by a bulldozer forced their way into Yasamin neighborhood in Al-Bireh town in the first hours of the day and demolished the structure,” Mahdi al-Khatib told The Anadolu Agency.

The makeshift building housed a factory specialized in manufacturing steel doors, he said, noted that the demolition cost the owners around $64,000 in losses.

The Israeli authorities are yet to comment on the demolition.

Yasamin neighborhood falls within “Area C,” which covers nearly two thirds of the West Bank and remains under Israel’s full civil and security control, as laid down in the 1995 Oslo II Accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians complain that the Israeli authorities frequently prohibit construction of cement and/or iron structures in the region.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the city of Jerusalem in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.

23 December 2014 Source: MEMO

Israeli troops raze Palestinian factory near Ramallah

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Israeli police have arrested more than two dozen current and former officials in a corruption investigation, includ-ing several from the party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, ac-cording to a police spokesperson.

Local media reported on Thursday that the investigation was one of the most “important” anti-corruption operations in the country’s history and could strike a blow to Lieber-man’s Yisrael Beitenu party just three months away from a general election.

According to police, “millions” of shekels of public funds have alleged-ly been transferred to organisations close to the party.

Officials implicated include Faina Kir-shenbaum, the deputy interior minis-ter, who has been questioned by po-lice. Her daughter Ronit will remain in

Dozens arrested in Israel corruption probeIsraeli Insider

custody until Sunday, the spokesperson said.

Stas Misezhnikov, former tourism minister, was also detained.

Others under investigation include Yisrael Beitenu’s former cam-paign chief, the former presidents of the basketball and handball federations and several officials in charge of settlement opera-tions in the West Bank and Golan Heights.

A total of 24 people have been arrested while another four remain under house arrest, the spokesperson said.

According to a recent opinion poll conducted by Israeli military radio, 40 percent of people who voted for Yisrael Beitenu in the last general election said they were reconsidering their support for the party in the wake of the scandal.

Lieberman refused to comment on the investigation, AFP news agency said.

He had been forced to leave the post in December 2012 following a corruption probe, but was reinstated in November last year.

Israelis will head to the polls in March for the second general elec-tion in just over two years after Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved parliament in December following the breakdown of his coalition government. 25 Dec 2014 Source: Agencies

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If Mary and Joseph Tried to Reach Bethlehem Today, They Would Get Stuck at an Israeli Checkpoint

By: Mehdi Hasan

‘Tis the season of Nativity scenes. But here’s a question to consider: would Joseph and Mary even have been able to reach Bethlehem if they were making that same journey to-day?

How would that carpenter and his pregnant wife have circum-navigated the Kafka¬esque net-work of Israeli settlements, road-blocks and closed military zones in the occupied West Bank? Would Mary have had to expe-rience labour or childbirth at a checkpoint, as one in ten preg-nant Palestinian women did be-tween 2000 and 2007 (resulting in the death of at least 35 new-born babies, according to the Lancet)?

“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” de-clared Father Ibrahim Shomali, a Catholic priest of the city’s Beit Jala parish, in December 2011. “Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission - or to have been tourists.”

Three years on, nothing has changed. Bethlehem today is surrounded on three sides by Is-rael’s eight-metre-high concrete wall, cutting it off from Jerusalem just six miles to the north; the city is also encircled by 22 illegal Is-

Articles & Analyses

raeli settlements, including Nok-dim - home to Israel’s far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieber-man (the only foreign minister in the world who doesn’t live inside the borders of his own country).

The biblical birthplace of Christ has had large chunks of land confiscated and colonised and its tourism-dependent economy has been hit hard: the city has one of the highest unemploy-ment rates (25%) and levels of poverty (22%) in the West Bank. As a result, Christians continue to emigrate from one of the ho-liest places of Christianity - the Christian proportion of Bethle-hem’s population has dropped, in recent decades, from 95% to less than a third. Overall, in 1948, Christians in Palestine accounted for roughly 18% of the Arab population; today they make up less than 2% of the Pal-

estinian population of the occu-pied territories.

So here is another question to consider: why is it that the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East, or countries such as Sudan, has attracted the at-tention and anger of politicians in the west, yet the Christians of Palestine don’t get a look-in? There are no motions, resolu-tions or petitions filed on their behalf; no solidarity expressed. Could it be because their perse-cutors aren’t Arabs or Muslims: it’s the state of Israel?

The Israeli government, conve-niently, blames the decline of the Palestinian Christian popula-tion on the intolerance of militant Muslim groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The problem for the Israelis is that the Chris-tian exodus pre-dates the exis-

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tence of Hamas - the creation of Israel in 1948 was marked by the expulsion of as many as 50,000 Christians from their homes - not to mention that Palestinian Christians in their own right have repeatedly refused to endorse their occupiers’ dis¬ingenuous narrative. A 2006 poll by the Open Bethlehem campaign group found that 78% of Chris-tian residents of the city singled out “Israeli aggression and oc-cupation” as “the main cause of emigration”, while a mere 3% exclusively blamed the “rise of Islamic movements”.

“Divide and rule” is the name of the (Israeli) game; trying to turn Palestinian Christians against Palestinian Muslims by blaming the latter for the persecution and emigration of the former; even trying to redefine what it means to be a Palestinian Christian. In February, the Knesset passed a law recognising Palestinian Christians in Israel as a minor-ity distinct from Palestinian Mus-lims. Yariv Levin, the Likud poli-tician who sponsored the law, said it would “connect us to the Christians, and I am careful not to refer to them as Arabs, be-cause they are not Arabs”.

Yet Arab Christians, and spe-cifically Palestinian Christians, have always been at the fore-front of efforts to resist Israeli expansionism: from politicians such as Hanan Ashrawi to dip-lomats such as Afif Safieh, who served as the PLO’s envoy in London, Washington and Mos-cow; from the New York-based academic Edward Said to the militant leader George Habash,

who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The current mayor of Bethle-hem is Vera Baboun, a Palestin-ian Christian who has written of “the despair of decades of liv-ing under a foreign occupation”. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, is Christian, too. “We as Christians are part and parcel of the social fabric of [Palestinian] society,” Hassassian told me, adding: “I want to celebrate Christmas in a free country.”

Palestinian church leaders - Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox - came together in 2009 to declare the occupa-tion a “sin against God” and urge a boycott of Israel. What a con-trast with US evangelical leaders who shamefully line up behind right-wing Israeli governments and Jewish settlers as they wait for Armageddon.

Palestinian Christians compli-cate the simplistic narrative of “Muslims v Jews”; they are an inconvenient reminder that the conflict in the Holy Land has nothing to do with theology and everything to do with freedom and self-determination. What-ever your view of Jesus or Mu-hammad, if you are a Palestinian resident of the West Bank you are a victim of the longest mili-tary occupation in the world.

“There is no difference between Christian and Muslim,” remarks a character in Saraya, the Ogre’s Daughter, a novel by the Pal-estinian Christian writer Emile Habibi. “We are all Palestinian in our predicament.”

“Divide and rule” is the name

of the (Israeli) game; trying to turn Palestinian

Christians against

Palestinian Muslims by blaming the latter for the

persecution and emigration of the

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issue no 115

Documents

palestinian man

palestinian factory

palestinian protests

israeli troops

israeli wars

israeli checkpoint4

palestinian state bid

game changer