Israel ‘committing memorycide’ – 3 prinicples forward

As part of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian ‘Nakba’, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe reflects upon the events of 1948 and how they led to 60 years of division between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Between February, 1948 and December,1948 the Israeli army systematically occupied the Palestinian villages and towns, expelled by force the population and in most cases also destroyed the houses, looted their belongings and took over their material and cultural possessions. This was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

During the ethnic cleansing, wherever there was resistance by the population the result was a massacre. We have more than 30 cases of such massacres where a few thousand Palestinians were massacred by the Israeli forces throughout the operation of the ethnic cleansing.

Pappe says the Israeli army systematically forced Palestinians from their homes
The Israeli army became a bit tired toward the end of the operation and the Palestinian villages became more aware of what was awaiting them and therefore in the Upper Galilee the Israeli army did not succeed in expelling all of the villages. This is why today we have what we call the Arab-Israelis or Israeli-Arabs.

This is a group of 50 to 60 villages that remained within the state of Israel and its population was steadfast and was not expelled over to the other side of the border – to Lebanon or Syria.

The international community was aware of the ethnic cleansing but the international community, especially in the West, decided not to confront head on the Jewish community in Palestine after the Holocaust.

And, therefore, there was a kind of conspiracy of silence and again the international community did not react and was complacent and this was very important for the Israelis because it showed them that they can adopt as a state ideology ethnic cleansing and ethnic purity.

Erasing history

Part of any ethnic cleansing operation is not just wiping out the population and expelling it from the earth. A very typical part of ethnic cleansing is wiping people out of history.

For ethnic cleansing to be an effective and successful operation you also have to wipe people out of memory and the Israelis are very good at it. They did it in two ways.

They built Jewish settlements over the Palestinian villages they expelled and quite often gave them names that reflected the Palestinian name as a kind of testimony to the Palestinians that this is totally now in the hands of Israel and there is no chance in the world of bringing the clock backwards.

Pappe says many former Palestinian villages were turned into recreational spaces

The other way they did it is planting trees – usually European pine trees – over the ruins of the village and turning the village into recreational spaces where you do exactly the opposite of commemoration – you live the day, you enjoy life, it is all about leisure and pleasure.

That is a very powerful tool for ‘memorycide’. In fact, much of the Palestinian effort should have been but was never unfortunately – or only recently began – was to fight against that ‘memorycide’ by at least bringing back the memory of what happened.

I think that there should be no reason in the world that two people – the Palestinians and the Jews – despite everything that happened in the past should not be able live together effective and in one state.

You need three things for that to happen. You need closure for the 1948 story – namely you need an Israeli acknowledgment of the crime it committed against the Palestinian people.

The second thing that you need is you need to make Israel accountable for this and the only way of making Israel accountable is by, at least in principle, accepting the Palestinian refugees right of return.

And thirdly you need a change in the Palestinian and Arab position towards the idea of a Jewish presence in Palestine as something legitimate and natural and not as an alien colonialist force.

I think these principles have to emerge and so far the political elites on both sides are unwilling to accept them.

Ref: Al Jazeera

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.

Plan to put synagogue in heart of East Jerusalem likely to be approved

The Jerusalem municipality has begun the process of approving a plan for a new housing complex, including a synagogue, in the heart of the Arab neighborhood of Silwan south of the Old City.

The plan, submitted by the right-wing Elad association, includes 10 apartments, kindergarten classrooms, a library and underground parking for 100 cars. Documents show the land the complex is to be built on belongs to the Israel Lands Administration (ILA); however, the ILA said it was unaware of the plan.

The municipal spokesman said Elad had leased the land, and therefore the plan does not require ILA approval. A municipal document dated January 21, 2008 notes that all necessary recommendations had been received in the planning file.

The area slated for the new project is located 200 meters from the Old City walls, in an area considered one of the most sensitive in the present negotiations with the Palestinians over the final-status agreement.

In a letter on Tuesday to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, attorney Daniel Seideman, representing the Ir Amim association and a city council member, Pepe Alalo (Meretz), asked whether Mazuz thought it proper that a synagogue be established in the heart of an Arab neighborhood.

The Ir Amim association addresses issues impacting Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem.

Seideman reminded Mazuz of repeated pledges by the State Prosecutor’s Office to the High Court of Justice to ensure there were no recurrences of the government allowing right-wing associations to take over public lands in Silwan and the Old City. He attached the photocopy of a 1991 deed of sale by the Jewish National Fund of the lands of Silwan to the ILA. The ILA then transfered the land to Elad in a process that was not made public.

“In the heart of Jerusalem, for all intents and purposes, an independent Elad kingdom has been created, in which hegemony, above and below the ground, has been given to a body with a clear ideological bent,” Seideman wrote Mazuz. He also said the “kingdom” was being established through actions designed to push out thousands of Arab residents from the area.

Seideman demanded that Mazuz instruct the ILA to withdraw the plan and the city to shelve it, and to investigate how the decision was made that led to the proposal for the construction project.

A 1992 government investigation headed by then Justice Ministry director general Haim Klugman found that associations managing properties in East Jerusalem, including Elad, had took them over by continuously submitting false affidavits, misusing the law governing absentee property and illegally transfering tens of millions of shekels public money to the associations, among other allegations.

In November, Haaretz reported that the registrar of non-profit associations was considering demanding that Elad be disbanded as a non-profit association, after it refused to report the sources of contributions of more than $7 million that it had received in 2005.

The Justice Ministry said in response that Elad had given the registrar the names of its donors, but asked that the names remain confidential in its financial report, as the law allows. The request was granted, and there is no intention of disbanding the association, the Justice Ministry added.

Ref: Haaretz

(jewish) Settlers, Archaeologists and Dispossession in Silwan – Archaeologists for Hire

n the early 1990s, a settler organization by the name of Elad (a Hebrew acronym for: To the City of David) began to plot its takeover of Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian neighborhood located a stone’s throw away from the Temple Mount and the Al Aqsa Mosque. Silwan is also home to one of the world’s most important archeological sites – the original Jerusalem where, according to the Biblical story, King David established his capital some 3000 years ago. Elad never hid its goals: to control this sensitive site and replace Silwan’s Palestinian residents with Jewish settlers. Like other settler organizations, Elad gradually found ways of influencing the higher echelons of Israeli power and gained permission to operate on the ground.

In the winter of 1997-8, however, Elad suffered a series of setbacks. After several complaints were filed with the police, the state sued the settler organization for building without permit on the historic site and for damaging archaeological remains. Meanwhile, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who earlier thwarted Elad’s plan to build 200 new homes over and around the excavations was warning the Attorney General against handing over Israel’s most important archeological site to an organization on the margins of the law. Soon after, the Israeli Supreme Court held a hearing at which the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority promised to reconsider handing the “City of David National Park” to Elad. The same court decreed earlier that Elad’s acquisition of Palestinian homes in Silwan involved unlawful actions.

Yet, as is often the case, the Israeli justice system proved ineffectual against the settlers. Today, ten years later, Elad fully controls Silwan. The Palestinian neighborhood is now dotted with a dozen settler outposts, clearly visible with their watchtowers, flags, and armed guards. Elad also runs the National park and visitors’ center, providing tourists with an extremely one-sided version of history.

Moreover, as the residents of Silwan know all too well, Elad also has the full backing of the Jerusalem Municipality, the National Park Authority, the Israel Land Administration, and the Jerusalem Police. Thus when a few residents filed yet another lawsuit against Elad’s activities last month, the police stormed their homes that same night, and five people were arrested “for theft.” Those courageous enough to file a complaint at the police station itself were also instantly arrested. In short, Elad is the law in Silwan, where people joke that “David” in “City of David” stands for Elad leader David Be’ery, Silwan’s ‘Sheriff,’ who to this day resides in one of the homes whose acquisition the court decried.

But perhaps the most unexpected accomplice of Elad is the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The same government agency that in 1997 warned against handing over the site to the settlers is now Elad’s happy subcontractor. For on top of everything else, Elad runs all the excavations in Silwan: it decides where and when to dig and hires the IAA to do the work.

This is a sweet deal for the budget-hungry IAA and for its archeologists. It is also a sweet deal for the settler organization. The IAA itself issues the required digging permits in an internal process of dubious legality, thus allowing Elad to turn archeology into its most effective instrument of dispossession. Many open areas in Silwan have been fenced off as an excavation sites, and the settlers have now sent the IAA to dig under Palestinian homes, probably in the hope that their lives will become so miserable that they will simply leave.

The court has issued a staying order against one of these digs, but others have immediately popped up, and recent judicial history gives little scope for optimism. Elad is also pushing to destroy 88 Palestinian homes to expand the “archeological park” in the area of the neighborhood known as Al-Bustan. International pressure prevented the demolition from taking place in 2005, but the plan has not been abandoned.

Needless to say, the excavations run by Elad and the IAA violate professional rules of ethics concerning “equitable partnerships and relationships” between archaeologists and indigenous peoples (as stipulated by the World Archeological Congress) as well as the universally accepted convention on excavation, including excavating in occupied territories (the New Delhi Agreements). That science is being sacrificed to serve a narrow political agenda can be seen from the fact that not one of the historical Muslim buildings in the national park has been preserved, and some were not even documented.

Many Israeli archeologists are unhappy with this situation, though most of them are unwilling to openly criticize the IAA, their main source for jobs and funds. Still, a small group of Israeli archeologists led by Dr. Rafi Greenberg (Tel Aviv University) has established ties with the residents of Silwan and has been lobbying for Elad’s removal from the site. Renowned scholars throughout the world, including many senior historians and archaeologists, have signed a petition to the same effect.

Another team of Israeli archeologists has held talks with their Palestinian counterparts and came up with a historical document, the “Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement.” But Shuka Dorfman, a former army general and the current director of the IAA, is unimpressed. In a recent interview to Ha’aretz, he responded to such initiatives by warning against “bringing politics into archeology” and urged “leaving these matters to the decision makers.”

In practice, all decisions about archaeological work in Silwan are taken by Elad. It’s good to know that politics are not involved.

Ref: Counterpunch, Yigal Bronner
Yigal Bronner teaches on South Asia at the University of Chicago. He is also active in the joint Israeli-Palestinian campaign in Silwan and is one of the signatories to the petition calling for taking archeology in the City of David out of the hands of Elad.

(Another week of) Israeli Human Rights Violations

The four children from the Abu Me’tiq family who were killed by an Israeli missile that hit their house

– 9 Palestinians, including 5 children and a woman, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.
– The victims include a woman and her 4 children who were killed when IOF shelled their house in Beit Hanoun town.
– 29 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 6 children and a woman, were wounded by IOF.
– A Palestinian civilian was wounded by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
– IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 4 ones into the Gaza Strip.
– IOF razed 140 donums[1] of agricultural land in the southern Gaza Strip.
– IOF demolished a house and damaged agricultural areas in Beit Hanoun.
– IOF arrested 37 Palestinian civilians and held at least 50 others for some time in the Gaza Strip.
– IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT.
– The fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip has escalated.
– 6 Palestinian civilian were arrested by IOF at military checkpoints in the West Bank.
– IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property.
– The Israeli High Court legitimize the demolition of at least 60% of the houses in al-‘Aqaba village in the Jordan Valley.
– Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian civilians and their property in Hebron.

Ref: Palestine Human Rights Report

Israeli colonalism map

Ref: guardian

Israeli occupation in plain…

Read Palestinan history

Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed

Palestinians watch an Israeli excavator destroying a Palestinian house in a village in the West Bank. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty images

The Israeli government defends the continued settlement construction particularly in the major settlements which it calls “population centres”, saying it will not build new settlements or expropriate more land. “In the population centres and in Jerusalem the reality on the ground will not be the same in the future as it is today,” Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said last month. “There will be more additional building as part of the reality of life and this is something that was explained …”

Not all the cases of demolition involve homes. In January, Israeli forces uprooted 3,200 trees, destroyed water cisterns and stone terraces in fields near Beit Ula, close to Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Again this was in area C. The civil administration said the demolition was an “enforcement activity” carried out after legal warnings.

But in this case the target was a €64,000 (£51,000) project from the European commission which began two years ago to provide a livelihood for the villagers, several of whom also put their own money into the planting.

“It was a tragedy for us,” said Sami al-Adam, 46, a farmer who had put in 45,000 shekels. “They’re tearing me out by my roots. They want to destroy Palestinian farmers psychologically and economically.”

Ref: Guardian

West Bank Stories

35 minute film presents the views of three Palestinians living in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank. The Dheisheh camp was established in 1949 within the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem on 430 dunums. It has a registered population of 12,045 of which approximately 6,000 are children. The camp’s residents were particularly active during the intifadah. The Israeli authorities built a fence around the camp and a metal turnstile for the main entrance, which were in place for almost eight years to prevent stone throwing at passing Israeli cars on the main Jerusalem-Hebron road. In 1995, the camp came under Palestinian Authority control, and the fence has since been removed.

The film offers tours of a disused Israeli military base, the Dheisheh camp and the Ibdaa (Innovation) cultural centre at Dheisheh which promotes cultural activities including a dance troupe and basketball team.

Settlers to move into E. J’lem police HQ

Based on an agreement signed with former police commissioner Moshe Karadi, right-wing settlers will take up residence in a group of buildings in Jerusalem’s predominantly Arab neighborhood Ras al-Amud in the next few days. The building had hitherto served as the Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters.

The buildings are slated to become the nucleus of a new Jewish neighborhood in the so-called Holy Basin area, the fate of which is supposed to be decided in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Police officials said yesterday that work began before Pesach on vacating the place, and that in the coming days they will finish moving the offices to a new facility built in controversial Area E1, which connects Jerusalem with Ma’aleh Adumim.

Concurrently, right-wing settler groups filed a request with the Jerusalem Planning and Construction Committee a few days ago to approve construction of a new neighborhood of 110 housing units on the vacated site.

The request states that the new neighborhood, Ma’aleh David, is intended to link up with the Ma’aleh Zeitim neighborhood, which was built in the heart of Ras al-Amud by tycoon Irving Moskowitz, with the encouragement of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert while he was mayor of Jerusalem.

In all, the neighborhoods of Ma’aleh David and Ma’aleh Zeitim are projected to house around 250 Jewish families in an area with 14,000 Arab residents.

Nadav Shragai, writing in Haaretz on January 8, reported that the right-wing groups active in “redeeming Jerusalem” by buying up Arab land were negotiating with the Bukharan community committee to purchase the land and building that housed the police’s Samaria and Judea District headquarters, which were acquired by the committee during Ottoman rule.

Noga Ben David, one of the leaders of the community, declined yesterday to discuss whether right-wing settler groups are behind the deal, saying he prefers to remain silent until the police vacate the premises.

Under the contract the police signed with the Bukharan community in July 2005, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, the community committee undertakes to apply to the Civil Administration and arrange for 14 dunams of land to be allocated in Area E1 for building a replacement building for the police. The committee undertook to plan the replacement building and surrounding development at its own expense.

This barter arrangement allowed the police to finance the new headquarters while bypassing the Budget Law.

The Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told Haaretz yesterday that allowing right-wing settler groups to move into the old police station in Ras Al-Amud, as the nucleus for a new neighborhood, would undermine the peace talks.

As for the new police station in E1, strong American objections have kept Israeli governments in recent years from implementing the E1 plan, which effectively envisions annexing to Jerusalem a wide swath of land on the eastern side of the Green Line.

The PA has persuaded the Americans that Israeli construction in that area would slice the West Bank in two, making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. The Americans have made it clear during the current round of peace talks that they are opposed to altering the status quo in Jerusalem.

For this reason, the inauguration of the new police station was postponed at the last minute on the eve of the last visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Erekat, who accompanied PA President Mahmoud Abbas on his visit to the United States last weekend, said that President Bush assured them he would object to any attempt to turn the Palestinian state into “Swiss cheese.”

The land on which the police station is located has a convoluted history: It was expropriated for “public purposes” by the Jordanian government, conquered by Israel in the Six-Day War, then legally handed over to the Israel Lands Administration, and finally given to the police – “for public purposes.”

Asked on what authority the police had handed over land it received from the ILA to an entity that designates it for residential construction in a sensitive area, the Public Security Ministry said: “At issue is an agreement that was signed with the Israel Lands Administration, the police and the Bukharan community’s endowment, whose rights to the land in Ras al-Amud were recognized by the court. In a circular agreement, the endowment undertook to build a new building for the district headquarters in return for the old headquarters.”

No response was received from the ILA before press time.

Ref: Haaretz

SAVING LIFTA – A CASE AGAINST ARCHITECTURAL ERASURE

This is a plea against architectural erasure and the destruction of memory While Israel proudly preserves its biblical heritage and archaeological sites, the rich Palestinian heritage is being allowed to disappear or is deliberately destroyed.

A poignant example, and an important symbol of this is the 4000 years old village of Lifta, which lies just outside Jerusalem, the nearest Arab village to the Jerusalem wall. It has been abandoned and has remained relatively untouched since the creation of Israel. T he Israeli army and the Irgun killed or drove out the last Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. Today Lifta is more or less a ghost town , frozen in time. The former villagers live mainly in East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jordan and in exile in the United States.

Now, however, a renovation project by the architect Gabriel Cartes of the Groug-Cartes firm, which collaborated with Ze’ev Temkin of TIK Projects, aims to turn Lifta into an expensive and exclusively Jewish residential area, mainly for Americans. The planned neighborhood would include three hundred luxury flats, a large hotel, a big mall, and a large tourist resort. In the process of carrying out the scheme, hundreds of Palestinian homes, all of which predated the creation of Israel in 1948, would be erased to obliterate any reminder that the area was once a prosperous Arab village – erasing its Palestinian history in the process. Architecture is being used to eradicate ethnic culture, that amounts to cultural vandalism.

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine are supporting the Israeli group called FAST (Foundation for achieving Seamless Territory) in a campaign to preserve Lifta. The Israeli organizations Zokhrot and BIMKOM have also opposed this Israeli real-estate plan.

T here is an ongoing ban on ‘internal refugees’ to return to the remnants of their destroyed villages. The Lifta masterplan does not refer to its Palestinian past. In this effort, architecture is being used as a political device to further Israel’s colonial policy.

Despite its international significance in an area important to three world religions, and its undoubted claim to be a world heritage site because of its timeless landscape, Lifta was never recognized by international institutions (like UNESCO) as a cultural heritage monument, due to Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestine as a nation .

The “Or Commission” report, which investigated the causes of the riots by the Israeli Arab population in October 2000, is quoted in the written objection filed by BIMKOM in their original defence of Lifta. “The role of the state is not reduced to material matters alone,” it states. “Governing authorities must find ways that will enable Arab citizens to express in public life their culture and identity in an appropriate and respectful manner.”

We ask that Liftah is retained as a ruin to be a reminder of its past or it should be allowed to be re-inhabited by survivors or descendants of the original residents. In either case they should be consulted. Four generations later the descendants are still protesting for the right to return.

Yakub Odeh, a Lifta refugee says:

“ Land ..that is designated for residential use should be planned such that it will be appropriate for the housing of the original residents of Lifta and their descendants, whose property was taken from them through no wrong of their own. This would enable the purchase or return of the land to them, and would constitute a rectification of the wrongs done to the place and its residents, and not only provide land to people of means who never had the slightest connection or link to the place.”

He continues…

“There are 37 Lifta refugees in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, and we have a Lifta Association; and now the internet makes it possible to keep in touch with those that have moved further away. We all want to return to our village. I’m sure we can achieve our dream through peaceful means….We will never give in. They say that every human being is born in the land, but for us Palestinians, our land is born in us.”

Esther Zandberg said in Haaretz in November 2004, when the plan was first presented: “the construction plan that has been under discussion since 1996 is a cause for wonder with regard to why it was ever commissioned. On such a emotionally charged and politically symbolic site, with terrain conditions that are difficult for modern construction, on a site on which the development of road, water or sewage infrastructure would require immense technological effort and heavy monetary expenditure, in a landscape in which any intrusion could be the source of perpetual regret, and on land on which there are no real estate pressures that might have provided an easy excuse, the plan seems opposed to all common sense, harmful to the interests of all of the parties on both sides of the conflict, and perhaps an attempt to conceal evidence of the existence of a people living in a “country without a people.”

In conclusion, Dafna Golan Agnon a prominent Israeli sociologist from the Hebrew University:

“It is possible and proper to develop Lifta as a village that preserves the historical Palestinian memory of the place. Preserving the memory of the village and its history could be a focal point for reconciliation between Jewish and Arab citizens, and offer an experience that helps lead to a solution of peace with our neighbors.

In a country that sanctifies memory, erasing Palestinian history is not only immoral, it is also foolish. We will not be able to build a future worthy of the name here if we erase and deny the memory of thousands of Palestinian refugees. It is possible to take their homes and erase their villages from the face of the earth, but as we know from Jewish history, longing for the roots and memories of homes is preserved for many hundreds of years. It is still possible to preserve the village, repair its buildings and turn it into a place of study of the past, forming a basis for dialogue about a common future of Israelis and Palestinians.”

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Ref: Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine