issue no 122

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Issue No : 122 16th February , 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

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Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Netanyahu calls on European Jews to emigrate to Israel

Family of slain US activist blasts Israeli court ruling

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FEATURED STORY

Articles & Analyses

Read in This Issue

The truth about West Bank demolitions

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Palestine condemns terrorist Chapel Hill murders ،2 victims were Palestinians

IOF detain 13 Palestiniansfrom West Bank

AP investigation: Israeli strikes on Gaza homes killed mostly civilians

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P 12

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Israel to Launch New Excavation Work under Al-Aqsa Mosque

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CONTENTS

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

Israel Insider

Articles & Analyses

News of Palestine

FEATURED STORY

Family of slain US activist blasts Israeli court ruling 4

Palestine condemns terrorist Chapel Hill murders ،2 victims were Palestinians 6

Hamas warns Netanyahu against Ibrahimi Mosque visit 7

PCOM delegates attend Nik Aziz’s funeral, conveying condolences to family 8

700 British artists pledge to boycott Israel 9

IOF detain 13 Palestinians from West Bank 10

3 Palestinian homes to be demolished by Israel in Jerusalem 11

AP investigation: Israeli strikes on Gaza homes killed mostly civilians 12

Blair arrives in Gaza 13

Activists injured, two kidnapped in Friday marches against settlement 14

Netanyahu calls on European Jews to emigrate to Israel 15

Israel to Launch New Excavation Work under Al-Aqsa Mosque 16

Lieberman threatens new aggression on Gaza 17

UN official calls for lifting Israel›s Gaza siege 18

The truth about West Bank demolitions 19

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

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Featured Story

Family of slain US activist blasts Israeli court ruling

Israel’s Supreme Court has put an end to decade-long legal proceedings on whether the Israeli army would be held liable for the March 2003 death of American national Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while attempting to prevent a housing demolition in the Gaza Strip.

Corrie’s family was pursuing a case against Israel’s defence ministry, alleging the army was guilty either of intentionally murdering Rachel, or of negligence while operating the bulldozer. The family appealed a 2012 ruling delivered by a lower court in Haifa that declared Corrie’s death an accident.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld that decision, which employed the “combat activities exception” clause of the Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law, noting the State of Israel cannot be held accountable for events that take place in a war zone.

“Our family is disappointed but not surprised,” Corrie’s family said in a statement after the ruling. “We had hoped for a different outcome, though we have come to see through this experience how

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deeply all of Israel’s institutions are implicated in the impunity enjoyed by the Israeli military.”

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the verdict.

The decision has left some questioning the impunity afforded to the Israeli army.

“A key aim of the laws of war is to protect civilians from unnecessary harm,” Bill Van Esveld, a senior researcher for the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera. “The ruling dangerously disregards the laws of war by granting blanket immunity to Is-raeli forces when engaged in ‘wartime activity’, without even assessing their conduct.”

The Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law was originally enacted in 1952, aiming to provide clear guidelines on when the State of Israel would be liable for damages against civilians. The law has been amended many times, often for the benefit of the military.

“It was amended in 2002, during the second Intifada, to define ‘war operations’ as ‘any action combating terror, hostile acts, or insurrection, and also an action intended to prevent terror, hostile acts, or insurrection that is taken in a situation endangering life or limb,’” Jamil Dakwar, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told Al Jazeera. “It was meant to provide protection from Palestinians suing the Israeli military.”

Dakwar - who has been providing the Corrie family with pro bono legal counsel since June 2003, six months after their daughter’s death - said the most recent amendment to the law was in 2012, further expanding the definition of war operations.

Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said the 2012 amendmentintroduced “near-insurmountable obstacles to justice, accountability and redress for civilian victims harmed by acts of the security forces” carried out in the occupied Palestinian territories.

With the high court opting to enforce that amendment, the results could be damaging for non-violent activists in the occupied Palestinian territories. The ruling disregards “fundamental pro-tections of the lives of civilians, especially human rights defenders in times of armed conflict. This is an outrageous outcome, and it deviates from internationally accepted norms. There should be responsibility for military actions,” Dakwar said.

According to the family’s statement, the high court has allowed separate proceedings “regarding inappropriate ways in which Rachel’s autopsy was conducted” to move forward in a lower court.

Corrie’s life and death have become the focus of international attention in the 12 years since she was killed. A play based on her writings, titled My Name is Rachel Corrie, will be staged in New York for the first time in April.

The family is now urging “the international community, and not least the US government, to stand with victims of human rights violations and against impunity, and to uphold fundamental [tenets] of international justice.

“We have taken this path for Rachel… [S]he has inspired all of our actions and will continue to do so.”

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The Palestinian government on Saturday condemned as “terrorism” the killings of three young Palestinian-Americans in North Carolina and called on U.S. authorities to include its investigators in the probe.

Police have charged a neigh-bor with Tuesday’s shooting in the town of Chapel Hill of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, saying the incident followed a dispute over parking.

But investigators said they were also looking into wheth-er the suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, was motivated by ha-tred toward the victims be-cause they were Muslim.

Branding Hicks “an American extremist and hateful racist,” the Palestinian Foreign Minis-try said the incident suggest-ed a rise in dangerous dis-crimination against American Muslims.

“We consider it a serious indi-

Palestine condemns terrorist Chapel Hill murders ،2 victims were Palestinians

News of Palestine

cation of the growth of racism and religious extremism which is a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ameri-can citizens who follow the Islamic faith,” the ministry said in a statement.

It called for “a serious investigation and the involvement of Palestinian investigators to clarify the circumstances of these assassinations and premeditated murders” in Chapel Hill.

On Thursday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for “staying silent” over the murders, which have garnered international attention and left some American Muslims feeling concerned about their safety.

“This has hate crime written all over it,” said the slain women’s father, Mohammad Abu-Salha.

14 Feb. 2015 Source: Reuters

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Hamas warns Netanyahu againstIbrahimi Mosque visit

Palestinian faction Hamas on Sunday warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from embarking on a visit to the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.In a statement, Hamas warned Netanyahu of “the consequences of storming and the desecrating the Ibrahimi Mosque.”Earlier in the day, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Netanyahu will visit the flashpoint site – known to Jews as the “Cave of the Patriarchs” – in the coming days as part of an electoral tour to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.Hamas slammed the intended visit as a “dangerous escalation” and stressed that the Palestinian people won’t stand idly by.Revered by both Muslims and Jews, the site is believed to contain the graves of the prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.Since the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque by extrem-ist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, Israeli authorities have kept Muslim and Jewish worshippers segregated.Hebron is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and some 500 Jewish settlers. The latter live in a number of Jewish-only settlement compounds heavily guarded by Israeli troops.

15 February 2015 Source: worldbulletin

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PCOM delegates attend Nik Aziz’s funeral, conveying condolences to family

PCOM delegates arrived in Kota Baru last Friday to attend Janazah of PAS spiritual leader Tok Guru Nik Aziz. Muslim Imran, PCOM’s chairman, conveyed deepest condolences to Nik Abduh and other family members, friends and students of Tok Guru. Imran has recalled the contributions of Aziz towards Palestine and other Ummatic is-sues.

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700 British artists have signed a pledge to boy-cott Israel as long as it “continues to deny ba-sic Palestinian rights,” the latest major success for the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanc-tions of Israel move-ment.“In response to the call from Palestinian artists and cultural workers for a cultural boycott of Israel, we pledge to accept neither professional in-vitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government until it complies with international law and univer-sal principles of human rights,” the call reads, according to the group Artists for Palestine UK, which organized the pledge.“We support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.”The signatories include artists from many fields, including writ-ers, film directors, comedians, musicians, actors, theater direc-tors, architects, and visual art-ists.The pledge’s supporters included many British citizens of Jewish heritage as well, including promi-nent actress Miriam Margolyes. “My support for the Palestinian cause is fiercer because I am Jewish and I honor the strengths of that religion and the suffering my people have experienced through the years. My visits to Palestine showed me at first hand how the people there are treated by Israeli forces. Their lack of humanity disgusts me -- I want no part of it,” she said in a statement. “I realize we were fed a lie about

700 British artists pledge to boycott Israel

the foundation of the State of Is-rael, a lie forged certainly out of desperate need to help the dis-possessed millions devastated by the horror of the Nazi regime. But to force people from their homes, from their ancestral lands -- that is no answer.”Former head of the English PEN writers’ union, Gillian Slovo, com-pared his support to the boycott of Israel to the boycott of South Af-rica in a statement.“As a South African I witnessed the way the cultural boycott of South Africa helped apply pres-sure on the apartheid government and its supporters. This Artists’ Pledge for Palestine has drawn lessons from that boycott to pro-duce an even more nuanced, non-violent way for us to call for change and for justice for all.”One hundred of the artists who signed the pledge also published a letter in the Guardian newspa-per on Friday explaining their de-cision.“Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theater companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank -- and those same com-panies tour the globe as cultural

diplomats, in support of “Brand Israel,”’ the letter noted.“We invite all those work-ing in the arts in Britain to join us.”The boycott movement has grown increasingly strong in recent years around the world and particularly in Western Europe and North Ameri-ca, once bastions of sup-port for Israel.

The Palestinian call for Academic and Cultural Boycott, which was launched in 2004 as part of the global BDS campaign, aims to pressure Israel to end its long-standing occupation of the Pal-estinian territories and history of human rights abuses against Pal-estinians.Supporters argue that thus far out-side political pressure and domes-tic left wing organizing has failed to effect change in Israeli policies, but believe a grassroots civil so-ciety movement to pressure the country’s authorities could effect meaningful change.The boycott targets official and institutional collaboration with Is-rael or Israeli-government funded institutions, but does not sanction individual Israeli artists, a fact not-ed by some of the signatories of the British boycott letter.“The choice not to present work in Israel is not an attack on Israeli artists, but rather a recognition that the thing you do may not be appropriate in a situation of on-going violent conflict, and that to ignore that is to support the idea that everything is under control and life and culture continue as normal, while bombs fall,” chore-ographer Jonathan Burrows said in a statement.

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- Israeli occupation forces detained four Palestinians from the town of Beit Um-mar near Hebron on Wednesday, hours after taking seven youths from the same area. Two more Palestinians were detained from the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem early Thursday.

Muhammad Ayyad Awad, spokesman for a local popular committee, said that Is-raeli forces detained four Palestinians identified as Zein Hisham Khalil Abu Hash-em, 18, Muhammad Ahmad Khalil Abu Hashem, 18, Ali Bassam Badawi Ikhleil, 20, and Jihad Youssef Hassan Alqam, 20.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said that Israeli forces raided the refugee camp and the home of Ziad Ahmad Khalid Elayyan, 29.

The identities of others were not known.

12 Feb 2015 Source: Ma’an and others

IOF detain 13 Palestiniansfrom West Bank

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3 Palestinian homes to be demolished by Israel in Jerusalem

Israeli authorities on Tuesday delivered demolition notices to three Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.Jawad Siyam, head of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, said that Israeli municipality em-ployees delivered three demolition orders to houses in the Ras al-Bustan area.One of the houses that delivered a demolition notice was built 25 years ago and is licensed by the municipality, Siyam said.The Israeli municipality also delivered a demolition order to a store belonging to the al-Abbasi family in the Ein al-Luza neighborhood of Silwan.The orders were delivered on the same day that authorities destroyed a recently-built home in the neighborhood housing 14 members of the same family.Israel rarely grants construction permits to Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and regularly demolishes structures built without permits.Israeli bulldozers demolished at least 590 Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2014, displacing 1,177 people, according to the UN.Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as “residents” whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.Jerusalem Palestinians face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel’s separation wall.

11/02/2015 Source: Ma’an

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AP investigation: Israeli strikes on Gaza homes killed mostly civilians

An investigation by The Associated Press (AP) billed as “the most painstaking attempt to date” of its kind has found that Israeli strikes on Palestinian homes in Gaza killed mostly civilians.

The news agency examined 247 Israeli airstrikes, “interviewing witnesses, visiting attack sites and compiling a detailed casualty count.”

Of the 844 Palestinians killed in these attacks, 508 were “children, women and older men.” One-third of the total were children younger than 16, “including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers be-tween the ages of 1 and 5.”

“The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man”, says AP.

Only 96 of those killed were “confirmed or suspected militants”, a mere 11 percent of the total.

According to AP, “the count tracked all known airstrikes on homes.”

14 February 2015 Source: MEMO

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Blair arrives in Gaza

Tony Blair, the envoy of the international quartet committee for the Middle East peace process, arrived in Gaza Strip via the Erez (Beit Hanun) crossing on Sunday morning.

Palestinian sources told Quds Press that Blair arrived in Gaza within a tour of the region, add-ing that he met on arrival with ministers of the consensus government at the headquarters of the council of ministers west of Gaza City.

It was not yet known whether Blair, a former Brit-ish premier, had other meetings on his agenda.

Visits by foreign dignitaries to the Strip have been noticeably on the rise over the past two months.

15 Feb. 2015 Source: PIC

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Activists injured, two kidnapped in Friday marches against settlement

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) kidnapped two activists, one of them from Ireland, and wounded many others during their suppression of the weekly anti-settlement marches in different West Bank towns on Friday afternoon.

The popular resistance committees stated yesterday that Israeli soldiers in Bil’in town violently subdued its member Mohamed al-Khatib and an Irish activist and took them blindfolded and handcuffed to an unknown place.

The marches started as every week after the Friday prayers in the West Bank towns of Bil’in, Ni’lin, Kafr Qad-dum, Masarah, and Nabi Saleh.

Scores of participants in these protests suffered injuries and suffocation from inhaling tear gas when Israeli troops violently attacked them as they were trying to march to annexed Palestinian areas.

Some young men in the marches responded to the firing of tear gas grenades by throwing stones at the sol-diers and torching tires on roads.

In other incidents, dozens of young men on Friday suffered injuries during clashes with Israeli troops in Aida refugee camp, north of Bethlehem.

Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that Israeli soldiers intensively fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at the angry young men inside the neighborhoods of the camp, causing several of them to suffer injuries.

They added that the invading troops stormed the cemetery of the camp to chase some young men amid firing of tear gas and stun grenades.

Clashes with invading soldiers in Aida refugee camp happen almost on a daily basis.

In Qalqiliya, Palestinian sources reported that 17-year-old Jamil Shetaiwi suffered a bullet injury in his leg when a large number of Israeli soldiers stormed Kafr Qaddum town on Friday morning and embarked on firing live and rubber bullets as well as tear gas at local young men. 14 Feb 2015 Source: PIC

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Israeli Insider

Netanyahu calls on European Jews to emigrate to Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated his call on European Jews to emi-grate to Israel, hours after an at-tack on a synagogue in Danish capital Copenhagen.

“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews and this wave of terrorist attacks – including mur-derous anti-Semitic attacks – is expected to continue,” Netanyahu said at the beginning of a weekly cabinet meeting.

“Of course, Jews deserve protec-tion in every country but we say to Jews…Israel is the home of every Jew,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel is preparing for “the absorp-tion of mass immigration from Eu-rope.”

Netanyahu added he “will submit to the cabinet a 180 million shek-els (roughly $46 million) plan to encourage the absorption of immi-grants from France, Belgium and Ukraine.”

“We will submit additional plans later. To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” he added.

Israeli paper Haaretz had reported that Netanyahu’s government has working hard to double the num-

ber of Jewish immigrants to Israel from Europe by exploiting recent at-tacks.

Three people, including a gunman, have been killed and five other po-licemen injured in a spate of attacks that began Saturday night in Co-penhagen.

On Sunday, Danish police said the attacker was gunned down near a train station in the center of Copenhagen following a manhunt with heli-copters and armored vehicles.

The first attack happened on Saturday during a meeting attended by controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks, known for his derogatory depic-tions of Prophet Muhammad. One civilian was killed and three police officers were wounded in the attack.

The second attack took place early on Sunday at a synagogue in Co-penhagen and the attacker fled on foot after firing at police. One civilian was killed and two policemen were wounded, but their injuries were not life-threatening.

The Copenhagen attacks came one month after a spate of attacks that hit French capital Paris, which left a total of 17 people dead, including three attackers. One of the attacks targeted a kosher market.

15 Feb. 2015 Source: AA

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Israel to Launch New Excavation Work under Al-Aqsa Mosque

Chairman of the Jerusalem Affairs Department in the PLO, Ahmed Qu-rei, warned Saturday of the reper-cussions of an Israeli tender to start excavation works under the western wall of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

The so called Israeli Society for Pres-ervation of Israel Heritage Sites an-nounced a new tender for starting digging works under the Mosque on the 20th of February.

The PLO official warned of the dan-gers of secret tours conducted in the Mosque by Israeli engineers and contractors a few days ago for the benefit of the new tender.

In a press release, Qurei said that the

Israeli government aims to establish routes to be connected with the network of current routes underneath the Mosque’s western wall in an attempt to enforce its control on the geo-graphical area in the old city of Jerusalem as a prelude to change the original character of the city.

He further warned of the dangers of current Israeli grid of tunnels dug previously under the city, amounting to dozens and aim to empty the area of the its indigenous citizens as a prelude to take over the land for the sake of settlement expansion and to tie settlement outposts in Jerusalem to-gether.

Al-Aqsa Foundation for Heritage and Waqf declared that “All the archeological findings date back to various successive Islamic periods, especially the Mamluk period; however, Is-rael claims such historical findings date back to the alleged Temple era.”

February 15, 2015 Source: Wafa

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Lieberman threatens new aggression on Gaza

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has threatened that Israel might launch a new aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Speaking at a cultural event in Beer Sheva on Saturday, Lieberman said, “An-other round of fighting against Hamas in Gaza is a matter of time; changing the current reality and living peacefully need changing the balance of terror with enemies”.

Lieberman renewed his castigation of the Israeli leadership’s performance during last summer’s aggression on Gaza, including both war minister Moshe Yaalon and premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the same context, Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman condemned the Israeli leadership for refraining from responding violently to Hezbollah rocket attack against an Israeli military force in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago, similar to the Jordanian severe response to the burning alive of the Jordanian captive pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh by Islamic State.

14-Feb 2015 Source: PIC

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UN official calls for lifting Israel›s Gaza siege

James Rowley, the UN’s coordinator for humanitarian affairs in the Pales-tinian Territories, called on Tuesday for lifting the years-long siege of the Gaza Strip and for rebuilding areas damaged during Israel’s devastating military onslaught on the strip last summer.“The siege on the Gaza Strip has tak-en a significant toll on the strip’s abil-ity to provide medical and humanitar-ian services,” Rowley said at a press conference held in Gaza’s Al-Shifaa Hospital.“The Israeli siege on Gaza must be lifted to allow the delivery of proper medical care and end patients’ suf-fering,” Rowley asserted.He urged the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing “to allow the transfer of patients and medical supplies” into the blockaded

enclave.The UN official also called on countries that had earlier pledged to fund Gaza reconstruction efforts to make good on their promises.Last October, attendees of a Cairo donors’ conference pledged a total of $5.4 billion to the embattled Palestinians, almost half of which was earmarked for the reconstruction of the war-battered Gaza Strip.Blockaded by Israel – by air, land and sea – since 2007, the Gaza Strip has seven border crossings linking it to the outside world.Six of these crossings are controlled by Israel, while a sev-enth – the Rafah crossing – is controlled by Egypt, which continues to keep it tightly sealed for the most part.Israel sealed four of its commercial crossings with Gaza in June 2007 after Hamas wrested control of the coastal terri-tory from the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.As it currently stands, Israeli authorities only allow the Ker-em Shalom crossing – which links Gaza to both Israel and Egypt – to operate, and that for commercial purposes only.

10 February 2015 Source: World bulletin

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The truth about West Bank demolitions

09 Feb 2015

Ben White

British newspaper the Daily Mail last week published an “exclu-sive” on claims that the EU is “funding illegal West Bank build-ing projects”, a reference to Pal-estinian structures built without a permit from Israeli occupation authorities.

The Oslo Accords, which Israel has systematically and repeat-edly violated, were intended to manage a “transitional pe-riod” ending in 1999. Under the terms of the Accords, about 60 percent of the West Bank, so-called “Area C”, remains under Israeli authority today.

The article contends that in helping Palestinians build struc-tures “unauthorised” by Israel, the EU is “acting illegally”. This argument, however, is ignorant of international law, obfuscates the reality on the ground today, and serves to advance a dis-turbing agenda.

Oslo AccordsFirst, the Oslo Accords changed nothing about the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Conven-tion (GCIV) to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). As the Harvard International Law Journal put it in 2003: “To the

Articles & Analyses

extent that the Oslo Accords conflict with the requirements of the GCIV, the latter shall prevail as a matter of international law.”

Through its land seizures, set-tlement enterprise, discrimina-tory legal regime, and apartheid wall, Israel has been guilty of grave violations of international law in the OPT for decades.

The illegality of the settlements, for example, is the position of the International Court of Jus-tice, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, and

High Contracting Parties to the GCIV.

When it comes to the demolition of homes in Area C, Israel is violating Article 49 (prohibiting forcible transfer) and Article 53, which prohibits the destruction of property except when “ren-dered absolutely necessary by military operations”.

Since, as Human Rights Watch put it: “It appears that the only purpose” of these demolitions “is to drive families off their land”, then it is “a war crime”.

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Stop demolitionsThe main legal opinion cited by the Mail comes from Alan Baker who, journalist Jake Wal-lis Simons omits to mention, is himself an Israeli settler. His resume includes working for the legalisation of unauthor-ised outposts, and sitting on the occupation-denying Levy Com-mittee. Baker attacks the EU on the basis they are a “signatory” to the Oslo Accords, yet only last month argued Israel should declare the Oslo Accords “no longer valid”.

Second, what is the reality on the ground today? In January, UN official James W Rawley urged Israel to stop demolishing Palestinianstructures, including those “provided by the interna-tional community to support vul-nerable families”.

The statement noted how in 2014, Israeli authorities de-stroyed 590 Palestinian-owned structures in Area C and East Jerusalem, displacing 1,177 people.

Under Israeli control, “less than one percent of Area C has been assigned for Palestinian con-struction - much of which is al-ready built-up”. This “intention-ally discriminatory manipulation of building and zoning regula-tions”, in the words of Rabbis for Human Rights, is “designed to make it virtually impossible for Palestinians in Area C [or East Jerusalem] to build legally”.

Denying building permitsThe statistics bear this out. A

Regavim to significant political players in Israel. One of Israel’s “objectives” in its discriminatory planning system, in the words of Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem, “is to drive Palestin-ians out of Area C, at least in part to facilitate its future an-nexation to Israel”.

Advocates of “the outright, uni-lateral annexation” of Area C can be found within Likud and Jewish Home - including cur-rent Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. Annexation of various types is increasingly being dis-cussed - some models require the removal of Palestinians, and all of them ignore or rewrite the basic principles of international law.

The irony of these efforts to un-dermine the EU’s support for vulnerable Palestinian commu-nities is that Europe is funding serious violations of interna-tional law - those carried out by Israel.

The EU’s complicity in Isra-el’s war crimes through trade deals and other agreements is the source of growing protest from Palestinians, civil society groups, and MEPs themselves.

Thankfully, these are much more likely to gain traction than the cooked up legal interpreta-tion of settlers and their allies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect PCOM’s editorial policy

UN report in 2008 revealed that over the previous seven years, Israel denied 94 percent of Pal-estinian building permit requests in Area C.

Official Israeli data shows that out of 1,426 planning applications submitted by Palestinians liv-ing in Area C between 2007 and 2010, just 106 were approved with only 64 permits eventually granted - not even five percent of the total.

Finally, what agenda is being ad-vanced here? Described in the Mail as a “right-of-centre Israeli NGO”, on its English website Regavim is “an independent pro-fessional research institute and policy planning think-tank”, aim-ing to “ensure responsible, legal and accountable use of Israel’s national lands”.

On the Hebrew site, however, Regavim boasts of fighting a “takeover” by “hostile elements” - a reference to Palestinians whom they seek to expel from their homes and lands.

Regavim wants to help “preserve the physical grip” of a Jewish ma-jority “over the country’s land”, and “develop and prioritise Jew-ish agriculture and settlement of the land”. Ari Briggs, report author and international director of Regavim, was candid with an interviewer in 2013; the group is “keeping Jewish lands in Jewish hands”.

Significant political playersThere is also a bigger picture here, which links the likes of

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issue no 122

Documents

palestinian homes

israeli army

israeli strikes

israeli bulldozer

israeli military

state of israel

palestinian demonstrator

gaza homes