Israeli soldiers detain Palestinian photojournalist Nasser Shiyuki in 2010

BEIT FURIK (AFP) — Two AFP journalists were assaulted Friday by Israeli soldiers who destroyed and seized their equipment in the occupied West Bank after the funeral of a Palestinian killed by the army.A video journalist with the agency, Italian Andrea Bernardi, was thrown to the ground and jabbed in the side with a weapon.He was held on the ground by a soldier, one knee compressing his chest, until he managed to show his press card.Bernardi suffered bruised ribs and an injury under the eye.Israeli soldiers pointed their weapons at him and his colleague, Palestinian photographer Abbas Momani.They smashed a video camera and a stills camera and took away another camera and a mobile phone.At the time both journalists were wearing body armor clearly marked “Press.”The incident was filmed and posted online by a local production company.The pair had been covering clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces when some troops took them aside, swore at them in English and told them to stop recording events.AFP has protested to the Israeli military over the incident and said it intends to file an official complaint.”Disciplinary measures will be taken,” army spokesman Colonel Peter Lerner told the agency.”The highest levels of command are aware of the incident,” he said, specifying that this includes the head of Israeli forces in the occupied territory.In an incident on April 24, the Palestinian AFP photographer manhandled Friday and a Palestinian colleague had stones thrown at them by Israeli soldiers.That incident was also filmed, and the army announced that disciplinary action would be taken against the soldiers involved.Friday’s clashes between Palestinians and troops at Beit Furik came after the funeral of Ahmed Khatatbeh, 26.He died of his wounds after being shot three times by Israeli forces near the Beit Furik checkpoint in Nablus. The army said he and another man had thrown a petrol bomb at a vehicle on a road to the Jewish settlement of Itamar.

Media freedoms under attackThe Foreign Press Association (FPA) and Reporters Without Borders have alleged in the past that Israeli forces deliberately target press covering demonstrations.Earlier this year, the FPA also condemned alleged Israeli targeting of journalists the 2014 Gaza war, where at least 17 journalists were reported to be killed by Israeli forces.2014 was the deadliest year for journalists in the West Bank and Gaza and saw a record number of violations against media freedoms, according to documentation by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA).MADA chairman Dr. Ghazi Hanania in March described last year as the “the worst, the deadliest, and the hardest year ever for journalists and media freedoms in Palestine, in terms of the nature and degree of the violence suffered by journalists and media freedoms, and in terms of the number of crimes and violations committed, which rose at a record pace and unprecedented.”Around three-quarters of violations were carried out by Israeli forces — 112 in Gaza and 239 in the West Bank — the rest by Palestinian security forces.Based on the figures, Israeli violations increased by 132 percent compared to 2013, while violations by Palestinian security forces in both Gaza and the West Bank increased by 46 percent.General director of MADA, Mousa Rimawi, said Israeli violations of press freedoms included assaults, killings, injuries, destruction of media institutions, the arrest of journalists and using the press as human shields.

(Source / 26.09.2015)

GAZA, (PIC)– The Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies slammed on Friday the reluctance maintained by the Israeli prison authorities as regards appeals to release the Palestinian sick detainee Sami Abu Diak, branding the one-month delay in considering such appeals "a death sentence."

Spokesperson for the Center Reyad al-Ashqar said in a statement the Israeli prison authorities reneged on earlier promises after they had set up a date to consider appeals by Abu Diak's lawyer to consider an early release hearing.

Al-Ashqar denounced the one-month postponement, noting that Abu Diak is breathing through a ventilator and in a coma, after four unsuccessful surgeries for colon cancer caused him an infection in Soroka Hospital, with serious health repercussions.

Earlier the Palestinian Ministry of Health said the condition of Palestinian prisoner Sami Abu Diak, 33, has reached a critical stage despite repeated appeals to the Israeli prison service to address his medical needs, adding that he is currently suffering from renal and pulmonary failure.

Al-Ashkar accused the Israeli occupation authorities of deliberately attempting to murder sick detainee Abu Diak at the Soroka hospital.

He said the Israeli prison authorities have often resorted to such intentional medical errors against Palestinian inmates.

Prisoner Abu Diak, from Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, has been in prison since he was 20, spending 13 years of three life sentences plus 30 years of jail time.

(Source / 26.09.2015)

Israel's Security Cabinet has approved the use of sniper fire on stone throwers as well as four-year prison sentences

(Source / 25.09.2015)

Member of the political committee Fuad Aliko said that the Israeli, Russian and Iranian shielding of the Assad regime against falling reveals the regime's decades-long claims about resistance to the Israeli occupation.

"While this propping up of the Assad regime exposes its ugly face, it proves that its only task is protecting the interests of international and regional powers at the expense of the Syrian people, their freedom and wealth," Aliko said.

"We sent a letter to the United Nations and the Arab League explaining that the Russian direct military intervention in Syria violates international law and an occupation, which requires a firm position at the UN Security Council and the United Nations."

"Though Syrians have been fully aware that the Russians and the Iranians will not hesitate to politically and militarily support Assad since the outset, they have never been dissuaded from working to achieve the goals of their revolution. Syrians are determined more than any other time to get rid of all forms of occupation, whether it was Russian, Iranian or Israeli, and nothing will deter them from restoring freedom and dignity."

(Source: Syrian Coalition / 25.09.2015)

Three-year-old Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi was shot in the head by Israeli forces with a rubber bullet in the occupied West Bank town of Kafr Qaddum

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (C) shakes hands with a man as he arrives to lead Eid al-Adha prayers in the city of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, September 24, 2015

Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says Egypt is further besieging the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip by flooding the border area, calling on Cairo to call off the project.

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh made the remarks during a speech to commemorate the Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice) in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis on Thursday.

“Why are they (the Egyptians) digging those trenches and those water pipes around Rafah [border crossing]? … We are telling our Egyptian brothers: Stop this project. We will do our duty against those who besiege Gaza and plot against it," Haniyeh said.

Over the past few weeks, Egyptian military bulldozers have been digging through the sand along Egypt’s border with Gaza in an attempt to flood underground tunnels used by Palestinians to transfer essential supplies, including food and fuel, into the besieged coastal sliver.

A picture taken from the southern Gaza Strip shows Egyptian army diggers working on the border between Egypt and the Israeli-blockaded coastal enclave, September 1, 2015

Earlier this month, witnesses said  the tunnels were submerged by water from the Mediterranean Sea through underground pipes with holes on them.

The Egyptian military said in mid-June that it had demolished about 1,430 underground tunnels between the country and the Gaza Strip over a period of 18 months.

Egypt argues that the operation is aimed at ending what it claims to be the smuggling of weapons to militants operating in the North African country's troubled Sinai Peninsula.

The Cairo government has repeatedly blamed a series of terror attacks in Sinai on Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. Hamas denies these allegations.

Since 2007, the Tel Aviv regime maintains its land, air and sea blockade on more than 1.8 million people living in Gaza, denying them the most basic items like food, medicine and fuel.

This is while the Gaza Strip is still reeling from Israel's 50-day military offensive last year, which left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead and more than 11,000 others wounded.

(Source / 25.09.2015)

The BDS movement will continue its campaign against the Israeli company as it opens a new factory in Bedouin area.

SodaStream moved its factory from an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank to a Palestinian Bedouin village colonised by Israel in the Negev

Rahat, Al-Hazeel – SodaStream, the Israeli company that has drawn criticism for operating in the occupied West Bank, will be ending its operations there and is opening a new factory in southern Israel.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) – which uses economic pressure in its pursuit to end the Israeli occupation – has targeted SodaStream, which produces home soda-making machines, for its factory’s location in Mishor Adumim, an illegal Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Standing in a plush meeting room in the new SodaStream factory, CEO Daniel Birnbaum refuted criticism of the company. “There’s no scandal,” Birnbaum told members of the media. “It’s a legitimate factory [in the West Bank]. We’re not breaking any international law, but in the meantime we decided to build a new factory here in the Negev.”

He said the company had moved to the new factory as it was “cost effective”, but admitted BDS had played some role in the move, though he claims it was “minimal”.

OPINION: Game changer: 10 years of BDS

Birnbaum added that SodaStream’s presence should have been encouraged in the occupied West Bank. He has referred to the West Bank factory as “an island of peace” where Israelis and Palestinians worked “in harmony”.

The West Bank factory officially closed last week, resulting in 470 Palestinian workers losing their jobs. The BDS movement claims the decision is a direct result of its pressure.

“This closure is a clear-cut BDS victory against an odiously complicit Israeli company,” said Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the BDS movement. Barghouti added that the movement had succeeded in pressuring major retailers across North America and Europe, including Macy’s in the US and John Lewis in the UK, to stop stocking SodaStream products. He said SodaStream also closed its flagship store in Brighton in the UK as a result of regular protests. Soros Fund Management, an investment management firm founded by billionaire investor George Soros, sold its stake in the company last year.

“After pressure from Soros’ partners in the region and the world, they dropped SodaStream and promised, in private letters so far, to issue guidelines similar to those adopted by the EU to prevent any investment into companies that sustain the Israeli occupation and settlements in particular,” Barghouti told the media last year.

Soros Fund Management did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

But this new factory, too, is proving to be controversial. BDS activists say it is located on land that the Israeli government confiscated from Bedouins in the 1950s. The factory is surrounded by 34 Bedouin villages, which are unrecognised by the Israeli government and are threatened with eviction, but no final date of eviction has been set as the Israeli government’s plans have been put on hold.

SodaStream sought to transfer all Palestinian workers to the new Israeli plant, but most were unable to do so because of the very long commute from the occupied West Bank and the difficulty obtaining work permits from the Israeli government, which regularly prevents Palestinians in the West Bank free movement across its checkpoints.

Israel granted the company 130 work permits, but only 37 of the Palestinian staff from the West Bank factory were able to meet the security requirements, which exclude single people and those aged 22 and younger.

Those 37 staff travel up to four hours each day to work in the new factory. Tahsin Hanadi, 38, is the only woman among the group: “I leave home at 4:30am each day and I am home at 8:30pm,” she said, detailing a 16-hour ordeal that involves crossing an Israeli checkpoint and going through security checks. She was not angry about the factory’s move, but admitted it was harder for her to travel so far each day for work.

Thirty-seven Palestinians travel up to four hours each day to work in the new SodaStream factory, built on the ruins of a Bedouin village [Kate Shuttleworth/Al Jazeera]

Palestinian Taqsim Mohsin, 27, said he travelled to the factory each day from Abu Dis, a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem that was separated from the city when Israel built its illegal separation wall. He travels three-and-a-half hours a day and works 12 hours.

“BDS is hurting us; many of us can’t get work in the West Bank and wages are so low. We need this work,” Mohsin told Al Jazeera.

But Barghouti disagreed that BDS is to blame, and said high unemployment in the occupied West Bank was a direct result of settlement activity and the separation wall: “Israel’s occupation has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in dire conditions of poverty. After losing their agricultural lands to settlements, thousands of Palestinians were compelled to work in Israeli projects, including in settlements to subsist,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera.

“The Israeli argument that boycotting the colonies [Jewish settlements] will hurt poor Palestinian workers is disingenuous and intended to divert attention from the illegality of all Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

SodaStream’s new $90m factory near Rahat, of which the Israeli government contributed $20m according to Birnbaum, was built in a new industrial zone touted by the Israeli government as a solution to sky-high unemployment rates among the Bedouin in the Negev. Forty-seven percent of Bedouin men are unemployed, and 87 percent of women are also unemployed, according to official Israeli government figures.

Human rights lawyer and PhD student Rawia abu Rabia said the origins of high levels of unemployment among Bedouin women began when Israel forced people off their lands: “Forcing women off their lands deprived them of their traditional roles … and left them with no options – no training and often no education.”

She said many Bedouin women simply had not attended school until recently.

Rahat was established by the Israeli government in 1971 as a planned urban township for Bedouins. This came after the government seized the territory, originally known as al-Hazeel, by evicting Bedouins, who previously led a nomadic lifestyle, from their homes. Many of the Bedouins were forced by the Israelis out of the Negev and became refugees inside what is today the occupied West Bank.

Rahat, like the Bedouin villages surrounding it, has some of the poorest living conditions in Israel.

Atiyeh al-A’sam, head of the regional council for the unrecognised Bedouin villages, said that while industrial zones providing employment were important, so was ensuring that Bedouins maintain and develop their agricultural skills.

He said Israel had been discouraging this, by restricting grazing and forcing Bedouins to keep livestock on tiny pockets of land. Industrial parks, like Idan Hanegev, where SodaStream is now located, were not the solution, A’sam told Al Jazeera.

Lawyer and Bedouin community leader Atwa al-Hag Abou Anzeh told a group of journalists that he was critical of the industrial zone, because of the Bedouins’ forced removal from their homes to a more urban centre in Rahat: “It was clear when Rahat was established [that] the state wanted to concentrate us in one place and take our land.

Their attempts to help with employment are insults to our intelligence, and you cannot create a partnership like the industrial zone between rich and poor. You must provide the poor with the right conditions to leave the circle of poverty,” he argued.

OPINION: I support the Israeli boycott – but which one?

Meanwhile, Barghouti said moving the factory inside Israel would not alleviate pressure from the BDS movement: “The BDS campaign against SodaStream will continue, as the company is moving to a location where it is directly colluding in the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab [Negev]. SodaStream’s move is part of the Israeli government’s plans to steal the traditional lands of Bedouin Palestinian communities in the Naqab, forcibly displacing them and concentrating them in ‘urban’ areas.”

But Birnbaum defended the new factory’s location. “There was nothing here when we laid the cornerstone a few years ago,” he said. “This was just desert. No one lived here, there was no water – nothing.”

But historian and director of the Negev office of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Thabet Abu Rass confirmed to Al Jazeera that the land on which the industrial park had been built had been confiscated from the Bedouin by Israel in the 1950s. According to Abu Rass, 70,000 Bedouin citizens were living in 34 villages that predated the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948: “The state of Israel considers the villages unrecognised and the inhabitants trespassers on state land.”

“Bedouin [Palestinians] are the most vulnerable community in Israel, and for over 60 years the indigenous Bedouins have faced a state policy of displacement, home demolitions and dispossession of ancestral land.”

(Source / 25.09.2015)

The rebels in the southern region, on Friday, enabled to release a number of prisoners in the regime’s prisons in exchange with Assad’s forces in Daraa.
Field sources reported that a prisoners exchange took place between the rebels and the forces of Assad, where the latter was released three detainees from the people of the city of Deraa in exchange for three Trucksfor traders from the Alawite sect, it has been previously detained in Naseeb crossing.
It is noteworthy that a prisoner exchange process has last July in the town of Busra al-Harir east of Daraa, and under the supervision of the Amoud Horan bridge which is operating in the region, the process has led to release eleven women and thirteen men, most of them residents of the town of Busra al-Harir displaced to the city of Izraa , mostly entire families, were arrested in the military security branch in Izraa, and that was for sixty-five bodies from the bodies of Assad’s forces.

(Source / 25.09.2015)

An early release hearing for Palestinian prisoner Sami Abu Diak, currently in critical condition in Assaf Harofeh hospital after a serious infection set in following surgery for colon cancer, was postponed for one month until 25 October.

Kamel Natour, Palestinian lawyer, denounced the one-month postponement, noting that Abu Diak is breathing through a ventilator and in a coma, after four surgeries for colon cancer after which he developed an infection in Soroka Hospital, with serious health repercussions.

Abu Diak was transferred from Soroka Hospital back to prison before his recovery was complete, making him particularly vulnerable to infection. The Israeli prison administration's mistreatment and abuse of sick Palestinian prisoners is a constant threat to the lives and health of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.

Issa Qaraqe, chair of the Prisoners' Affairs Committee, also denounced the delay, saying that the full month of delay "reflets clearly Israel's denial of the humanity of Palestinian prisoners, and its disregard and contempt for the lives of prisoners even when they are on their deathbed."

The Palestinian lawyers demanded full investigation about medical negligence praticed against Abu Diak

(Source / 25.09.2015)

By Engelbert Luitsz              (www.alexandrina.nl/?p=4151)

Vandaag werd een Palestijns kind van drie jaar beschoten door Israëlische militairen terwijl ze op het balkon van haar huis zat. Ze werd aan het hoofd geraakt met een met rubber omklede stalen kogel. Toen haar vader haar in veiligheid wilde brengen werd ook hij beschoten en aan het hoofd geraakt (Ma'an News).

De Franse historicus en arabist Jean-Pierre Filiu heeft een brede belangstelling. Hij publiceerde over de Arabische wereld en over de relatie van de Franse president François Mitterrand met de Palestijnen, maar ook over de flamencozanger Camarón de la Isla en over Jimi Hendrix. Hij schreef zelfs de songtekst voor een lied over Gaza na de Israëlische aanval van 2012 (Une vie de moins).

In 2012 verscheen zijn gedetailleerde historische studie over de Gazastrook. Dit jaar verscheen er een herdruk en bovendien een Engelse vertaling. Het is gezien zijn andere publicaties niet verrassend dat hij ook hier een niet alledaagse invalshoek heeft.

Het boek staat nog op mijn leeslijst, maar gelukkig schreef de onvolprezen Richard Falk een uitgebreide recensie. In dit stukje zal ik zijn lezing volgen.

Histoire de Gaza (Eng.: Gaza: a History) begint met een historisch overzicht dat teruggaat tot de 18e eeuw voor onze jaartelling. Toen waren het de Hyksos die een oogje hadden op het handelscentrum dat Gaza toen al was. Later volgden de Egyptenaren, de Perzen, de Grieken, de Romeinen, de Arabieren, de Fatimiden, de Mammelukken, de kruisvaarders en de Ottomanen. Het tweede deel van het boek gaat over de moderne geschiedenis en de toekomst van de Gazastrook die in belangrijke mate zijn bepaald door de Balfour-verklaring uit 1917, waarin Britten en zionisten bepaalden wat er met Palestina zou gebeuren zonder de bevolking zelf iets te vragen.

Richard Falk heeft duidelijk wat moeite met de overdaad aan feiten die wordt aangedragen. De talloze details en de vele, vaak onbekende namen maken het de lezer niet gemakkelijk. Daar staat wel tegenover dat Filiu die feiten inpast in een visie waaruit zijn grote kennis van en inzicht in het maar voortdurende conflict blijken.

De indeling die aangehouden wordt voor de moderne geschiedenis laat duidelijk zien dat Filiu hier een kant kiest. Hij kiest voor de slachtoffers en dan vooral vanuit het menselijke perspectief; hij kiest niet voor een benadering via het internationaal recht, zoals een collega als Ilan Pappe dat vaak doet, en hij vermijdt dan ook termen als 'genocide' en 'misdaden tegen de menselijkheid'.

• 1947-1967: De generatie van de rouw;
• 1967-1987: De generatie van de onteigening;
• 1987-2007: De generatie van de Intifada's;
• De generatie van de impasse?

De oorzaak van dit alles was uiteraard het overduidelijke maar enigszins gecamoufleerde doel van de zionisten om een exclusief joodse staat te creëren op het land van de Palestijnen. Onder de vele critici van het zionistische project bevond zich ook al-Husseini, de burgemeester van Gaza Stad. Al in 1937 had hij de Britten gewaarschuwd voor de gevolgen van een verdeling van het land en het steunen van een joodse staat. Het citaat dat Filiu van hem geeft laat niets aan duidelijkheid te wensen over:

Het ware beter dat de Britse regering de bevolking van Palestina trakteert op dood en verwoesting, of dat zij ze in giftig gas hult, dan dat zij hun een dergelijk plan oplegt.

Waar de analyse van Filiu afwijkt van de gangbare overzichten is wanneer hij zeer duidelijk stelt dat de kern van het Palestijnse verzet en daarmee de basis van de Palestijnse identiteit in de Gazastrook ligt. Waar Israël, de Palestijnse Autoriteit en het Westen doen of Ramallah het Palestijnse centrum is, doorziet Filiu dat koloniale spel van een onderdrukker die een de facto machteloze elite in stand houdt om de eigen agenda te kunnen doordrukken. Elke onderhandeling, elke concessie van Palestijns kant brengt hen nog verder in de ellende. Alleen verzet kan nog een tegenwicht bieden tegen het verlies van eigenwaarde.

De logische, maar volgens Falk nog opmerkelijker, volgende stap is dan ook dat een mogelijk vredesproces moet uitgaan van de Gazastrook en niet van de Westelijke Jordaanoever. Er moet dus op een heel andere manier worden nagedacht dan tot nu toe gedaan is. Filiu formuleert het zo:

Het is in de Gazastrook dat de basis voor een duurzame vrede gelegd moet worden… […] Het is zinloos te denken dat een gebied dat zo vol zit met fundamentele ervaringen genegeerd of gemarginaliseerd kan worden. Vrede tussen Israël en Palestina krijgt alleen betekenis en inhoud in de Gazastrook, die zowel het fundament als de hoeksteen zal zijn.

Dat regeltje staat er dan nog wel: "Vrede tussen Israël en Palestina". En daar klinkt de historicus opeens heel utopisch. Ik weet niet of de Engelse uitgave nog is bijgewerkt, maar sinds 2012 is er weer heel erg veel ten nadele van de Palestijnen veranderd. We zijn weer vele duizenden doden, gewonden en gevangenen verder, weer zijn er talloze huizen verwoest en weer zijn er grote stukken Palestijns land ingepikt. De Gazastrook is nu al onleefbaar. De wreedheid en het sadisme nemen alleen maar toe, pijnlijk geïllustreerd door het levend verbranden van een Palestijns kind vorig jaar en van een hele familie dit jaar, zonder dat de regering ook maar iets doet, zonder dat de bevolking massaal in opstand komt.

Gisteren was premier Netanyahu eens duidelijk over zijn ambities. Tijdens een nieuwjaarsreceptie van de Mossad zei hij dat Israël een wereldmacht moet worden, omdat niemand wil samenwerken met zwakkelingen (Netanyahu: Israel Must Become a World Power). We zien hier het bekende zwart-wit-denken dat het zionisme zo kenmerkt. Zelden kom je grijstinten tegen: ofwel je steunt ons onvoorwaardelijk, ofwel je bent onze aartsvijand. Ofwel je hebt de hele wereld in je macht, ofwel je bent een zwakkeling.

Zolang het zionisme aan de macht blijft is er geen plaats voor Palestijnen. Daar deel ik zelfs het sprankje hoop van Filiu niet. Het zal niet lang duren of er is helemaal geen plaats meer in Israël voor mensen met enig fatsoen. De alleen in naam seculiere zionisten gedragen zich gedwee volgens de oekazes der rabbijnen. Ofri Ilani beschreef het onlangs treffend in de Israëlische krant Haaretz (Justifying War Crimes in the Name of Judaism):

Nationalistisch-religieuze rabbijnen leggen bijvoorbeeld uit dat de relatie tussen Israël en de rest van de mensheid is als de relatie tussen de hersens en de rest van het lichaam. Israël moet onder geen voorwaarde rekening houden met de mening van de gojim, al helemaal niet wanneer het morele aangelegenheden betreft.

Waarschijnlijk heeft Filiu gelijk met zijn "Gaza-centrische visie" en is dat ook een van de redenen om de Gazastrook te vernietigen. Zolang we mensen als Richard Falk en Jean-Pierre Filiu kunnen lezen lijkt er nog een sprankje hoop te zijn, maar vaker nog denk ik dat we samen met hen en vele anderen zitten te kijken naar een reeds verloren wereld.